Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2011 00:30:29 +0200 (CEST)
From: fulldisc@....hu
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: (no subject)

HELo tor.hu
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From: "TOR" <fulldisc@....hu>
To: "Full Disclosure" <full-disclosure@...ts.grok.org.uk>
Subject: Re: [Full-disclosure] NiX API


> However though, any merchant that accepts purchases from user's behind proxies
> or other anonymizer's is taking a siginificant risk.


You don't just block anonymizers: you block webhosting providers, server hostings, hosts based on proxy HTTP headers, TOR, etc.
According to the stats on your control panel (number of subnets vs number of IP's) you seem to prefer to just put the whole /24 on block when you notice a new 'suspicious' IP.
In the end, I think you are blocking a lot more potential customers than fraudsters.
By the way, we do something similar here (we have an extensive list of throwaway mail providers, we collect proxies, etc), only we use these lists to block people from getting free VPN access through proxies, not customers who are willing to pay. Doing the latter would reduce our revenue by at least 50%.


> Guess what will happend to that merchant? They are frustrated while
> answering unauthorized paypal claims. If this purchase was done using a
> stolen credit card, PayPal will charge this merchant for outrageous fees


I agree that Paypal's charges are outrageous (for example, 3 EUR purchase -> 30 EUR fees for the chargeback, regardless of whether we accepted or disputed it).
For us, what helped the situation in the end was focusing on user data consistency, immediately refunding suspicious purchases from China and so on, not the IP's.
We've gotten chargebacks from regular ppp pools in China and have many satisfied returning customers who are using proxies or just some network that is natted behind a server in a server hosting.
It doesn't mean they are trying to be anonymous, it just means their network works like that. For example, it is typical for a wi-fi provider to NAT users on their server in a server hosting (that you probably block as a /24 subnet), but they're still potential customers of any online shop, not just our VPN.


> wondered why they could not login using the proxy, I said, remove the
> proxy and try again and then do purchase. They did.


Some people might be more patient and write emails about how they cannot make a purchase, but most will just find another place.


> "You're a legit user --> Why in earth you would like to use a proxy or or anonymizer to do the purchase?"

Torrents, general privacy, HTTP connection to my websites, etc. I use TorVPN 24/7, make payments through Paypal and with my credit card as well from this IP without any problems.


https://torvpn.com/
http://torvpn.com/temporaryemail.html
http://torvpn.com/proxylist.html



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