Google yanks OSVDB's Checkout account without notice | Hacker News Reader

Google yanks OSVDB's Checkout account without notice

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7 pointsnrr5 comments

Warning: the following is pure speculation on my part.

http://blog.osvdb.org/2010/01/04/challenge-osvdb-winter-2010...

or every new vulnerability issued an OSVDB ID from January 1, 2010 through April 1, 2010, I will donate $0.50 (fiddy cents) of my own money to the OSVDB fundraiser. I challenge anyone who feels that OSVDB is a valuable resource to the security community to match my donation.

If people took him up on that, the Checkout account is going to have a surge of small donations, right? Oof. Aside from changing your usual pattern of behavior, which is always a risk with payment processing, small donations are often used to probe stolen credit cards to see if they are active or not. I could see a payment processing algorithm not liking that.

This would be less problematic if Google had customer service at least as good as Santa Claus'.

Sure, technically speaking Santa Claus doesn't exist. But if you post a letter to him, the Post Office puts it in with a big pile of mail, and parcels it out to dogooders. Many poor kids, as a consequence, do end up getting presents because they wrote to Santa Claus.

Dear Santa: For Christmas, could you approve my AdWords ads?

Any business relationship can be voided with a proportional amount of effort as it took to enter it.

You got your Google Checkout or Paypal account nearly automatically by virtue of controlling a checking account (by having a pulse) -- why does it surprise you that they'd suspend it an the slightest hint of anything untoward? You're but a twinkle with a twitter account in a sea of fraud.

Anything to link to other than a Tweet?

Hmm. Let's see how this goes:

Google acts like an asshole to somebody. Typically this is because they refuse to spend any money on customer service, while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge their verging on monopoly market share (though not in the payments market).

Next, if someone has a big enough soapbox, Google gets embarrassed. Matt Cutts or someone similar shows up to do damage control. Meanwhile, the G screws without repercussions anybody who can't raise a big stink online.

Wash rinse repeat.

See: adwords problems, adsense problems, search problems, payment problems, Nexus One problems, etc

This is what scares me away from the Nexus One. I know I will see software support and bug fixes for general (and many obscure) problems for some time to come, but I am wary that I may fall into a gap somewhere, and be stuck with a fancy paperweight. At least Nokia and Apple etc have service centers, a phone number you can call, a real response to your needs as a customer.

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