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Comment by vldx | Hacker News Reader

I was asked recently (2017) by Linode to provide scanned my credit card (after paying, then eventually refunded). The reason - fraud prevention, whatever that means. Certainly leaves bad flavor and decided to go w/ DO.

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I encountered the same thing (also in 2017) with the addition that they wanted front and back scans of a government-issued ID as well.

Having to pay with a credit card before you can use paypal didn't earn them any points either. Suffice to say I did not go with Linode.

PayPal's fraud detection sucks, so I can definitely understand companies wanting to verify/charge a credit card directly before accepting PayPal.

Yes, probably is one of the reasons why they do those checks. I suppose also that depends a lot on the kind of plan that are you going to use, probably they do more checks for more expensive plans.

I worked at a hosting company for a few months, and they way the prevented fraud seemed backwards, draconian, and unfair. But I couldn't come up with a better way of doing it. Fraud prevention seems hard.

I did not have to make that with them, but I had to pass a weird process with OVH in order to confirm my identity through a phone call, and in the process have to wait several hours until I have my server available.

Really, they required me to send a copy of my ID (both sides) without anything blanked out. Obviously, I went with Linode instead as they didn't require this.

That just happened to me on Saturday. I decided to go with DO. You get what you pay for.

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