Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web
oonwoye.com
oonwoye.com
Google Chrome takes the cake here though. They use your IP to determine the install language. Even if you download the US binaries, they use your IP to determine your local search site and display non-English results.
The real kicker? Chrome then prompts "This page is in <Spanish>. Would you like to translate it?"
First, if my OS and browser preferences are stating English (or any language for that matter), why should the IP come into play? "Normal" people will already be using a localized OS and hence will send an Accept-Language with their preferred language (and perhaps country).
Second, while you can go try to navigate the "Under the Hood" section in another language to switch languages, the default Google search uses "{google:baseURL}", which gets hard coded to the localized version someone though you should be forced to use.
You actually have to delete the default search in the omnibar and create a new one, manually specifying the Google site you wish to use. There is no quick option to say "no, your silly auto-detection is broken, use the language I'm specifying for UI and search".
And ok, it was my fault for not testing the language option before mentioning it.
Also, it's not "localization-challenged". I would be more sympathetic to sites in general if there was no Accept-Language header, and if geo-IP lookup was some automatic service baked into every web app library.
But no, sites doing this go out of their way to do this. It's as if there's some secret coalition of idiot PMs that think adding IP-based language settings is going to get them a bonus or something.
Normal is an ATM that doesn't know to look on my card or at my account data for my language. At my own bank. Ok, so maybe prompt for that and set that once. But then prompting me every single time I use that same card in the bank's own ATMs? Duh.
Normal is an IP-based language selection that fails for non-native speakers, or for regions where the populations where there are multiple languages.
Normal is a language chooser box implemented with the available languages listed in English.
Normal is US ASCII encodings and sort orders, when you're not running with English selected.
Normal is not being able to select your default language and spellings and related grammar checks on the fly, and on a per-document basis.
Normal is English text labels within images and icons.
More than a few of these systems will barf in creative ways when you toss UTF-8 at them, too.
Normal is a scheme a programmer or IT specialist can use to alter a mass deployment implemented as the main user interface, rather than as a design suitable for the end-user first and IT second.
Yes, we can do a better normal, too.
I once had an offer from a large hardware manufacturer to bundle some software with a hardware device they made, the deal fell through when I realized the cost of making the software work in all the languages they supported and providing tech support in all those languages would have to be born by us. There simply was no way we could afford it.
Another problem is that there is no really good guide (there certainly wasn't at the time, but even today this is sorely lacking) on how to make your software truly multi-lingual in a way that leaves absolutely no loose ends.
Even frameworks that are supposedly multi-lingual typically have lots of shortcomings and only work well in the language of the original developers, and maybe one or two others.
Try throwing right-to-left fonts at them, the installer is available in only one language (even if the software is multi-lingual), fonts will be missing and so on.
The amount of fraud from this end has necessitated these measures.
Hey! That’s a gap in the market, why don’t you guys in Africa do something about it?0
Fuck off."
That's really not a very convincing counterargument.
Sounds like he'll fit right in with most of the Internet.
For a company the size of Paypal, not enough to justify the political risks entailed by entering those markets. But startups are not the size of Paypal. 1% of Nigerians is still 1.6 million people. Paypal can afford to cut out large portions of the world. The company that solves the problem will have an advantage.
Considering the degree to which internet entrepreneurship has been established in Nigeria (even if exploitive), the construction of WACS and its high bandwith connection to Europe, its oil reserves and its native English speaking population, Nigeria has some real strategic advantages.
Nigeria GDP (PPP): $170bil
Nigeria GDP per capita: $1754
I can understand why e-commerce companies might just choose to blacklist an entire country. There isn't much of a financial incentive to expend the resources for that small of a market.
I am not trying to comment on whether this is justifiable or not, but that is the reality of the situation.
The issue is the governments like Nigeria are completely incapable of regulating what goes on inside of its borders. In cases like Nigeria, where the "419" scam is actually an measurably significant industry within the country, the scammers are probably in cahoots with the authorities.
Why does e-commerce work in the US? As a guy sitting in New York, how can I comfortably sell goods via the internet to someone in Hawaii or New Mexico? Fundamentally, it's because the US is a nation governed by law, and efforts to defraud are not acceptable.
I think the point on corruption and the rule of law is really significant. It goes beyond just e-commerce and into a whole economy. A government of men and not of law does not make for a thriving economy. If found these two maps on corruption and governance really interesting. They really speak to they trouble with doing e-commerce in Africa:
Transparency International: http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/...
Governance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_Governance_Indicators
I wonder how ratings for China / India / Brazil will change in the next few decades as their per-capita GDP increases.
I don't think US industry has ever dismissed South America as a rounding error. They get the huge economic importance it has. Rather, we've had some feet dragging from unions (and to a smaller extent a little xenophobia, but I think this is really really small when it comes to Free Trade Agreements). Give the US another decade or two and there will be a full on American Free Trade Agreement.
I worked on Terespondo, a search advertising company focussed on SA from 2002-ish to 2006. We were thirty dorks who happened to speak the language, and we captured 65% of a continent-wide market. Why?
- MS AdCenter didn't get multilingual support until 2008 or so.
- Google Adwords required a US credit card until 2004 or 5.
- Overture (Yahoo) were idiots.
It's gotten much better in the last ten years.
While probably justified, it also leaves most of the country out of the growing trend towards global ecommerce, possibly encouraging more people to take up fraud as one of the few ways to make any money at all.
It seems like I'm missing something, so I have a question for those who upvoted this comment. Do you all seriously think that the OP should set up an "african paypal" just because the real paypal is broken for him?
How does 144 million people sound to you? 85,208,008 mobile phone users and 44 million internet users low? Hmmm. For the rest, Bing/Google is your friend.
Romania is a part of the European Union as well. It's incredibly frustrating just to sit there and get "unable to process."
What a crappy error message too. How about "this is a suspicious transaction. Please call GoDaddy or join a LiveChat session to continue."
It really feels second class. Fuck indeed!
Anyway - I agree with him that it's a pain. My solution is to use a VPN, too. As long as that gets the problem solved I'm happy.
Fraud IS a major concern in general. I don't have the data to even have an opinion on whether rejecting everything out of Nigeria so aggressively is justified, but if it was my business, would I flag it for manual inspection? Absolutely.
I'd also be willing to listen to my customers and manually approve things when it's justified. I can't really ask for more than that. Now, as I said, I'm sure the situation if you are coming from Nigeria is even worse. But I think what he should be asking for is a little more openness in the "manual validation" area, rather than full up-front acceptance of his transactions. I don't think asking for that is realistic.
His response to "the amount of fraud necessitates it" is "F you" ... well, what, is he saying there isn't a fraud problem, or if there is businesses should ignore it? Please. Give me a break. It's one thing to feel personally frustrated to that point, but to write it up like it's some kind of answer won't do anything.
I don't know what answer is better than the status quo, and apparently he doesn't either. Anyone have a comment on what that might be?
Sure, there is some scam coming out of the country, but some guy just looks at the numbers and then sends an email "Block Nigeria". And we're not talking of some small site, we're talking of one of the the biggest payment processors in the world.
The country is the biggest market in Africa, people are quickly getting connected to the world, it's just not morally right to exclude an entire set of people in such a dismissive manner.
Think of it this way: imagine that paypal suddenly decided to exclude Arizona from using Paypal because it has a higher statistical likelihood of fraud. A lot of people would protest at the unfairness of this action.
But because it's Nigeria, there are very few people to protest.
Paypal is a site that is only useful when everyone uses it. And everyone IS using it. Once they have entered that stage, it be becomes virtually impossible for other payment providers to compete effectively. In that situation, the market cannot solve this problem. There is no niche payment provider going to pop-up just for Nigeria. Paypal, once it so strongly dominates the market, has a moral obligation not to exclude anyone from using their services. It can't just stamp a country as not "allowed to use paypal"
The fact is, if Paypal were not permitted to statistically discriminate, they wouldn't exist. Is it really a moral travesty that they are using nation of origin as one of the predictors?
There's lots of reasons it's not great to be a Nigerian in Nigeria - fixed elections, corruption, violence, low standard of living, tension between the north and south, nasty tropical diseases, relatively lower education opportunities, weak arts community, flowover from ethnic tension in neighbouring states.
In the scale of things, concern over ability to make internet payments is probably pretty low, and a concern that would be pressing only to a small elite in the country.
(1) Concentration of power: there's a qualitative difference between a large organization making an absolute and sustained decision on a corporate basis, and many distributed small organizations or individuals making ad-hoc iterated decisions on a case by case basis. Normal statistical variation means that in all likelihood, the market will simply be smaller, not all but extinguished.
(2) Your guess may be incorrect: I find it difficult to recollect an attempted online commercial transaction that I aborted owing to fear of a scam. Now, if you knew my personal circumstances, perhaps you'd be able to direct my attention to such cases; in lieu of that, can you be more specific in your guess, and at least give me a few examples? A few points on my behaviour: it's my personal policy never to buy anything in direct response to any advertisement or inducement, whether in person, over the phone, via email, or online, if I do not have a prior independent non-commercial relationship with that entity. I will pay more for a service or product that I have found myself rather than accept a similar service or product for a lower price if that service or product was directly advertised to me; I infer that the extra expenses in reaching me directly will be more than recouped via means that are not immediately obvious to me, such that the savings are probably illusory. Any time I have ever engaged in online commerce, it directly or indirectly started out with a Google search for the product or product category in question, or for a store name found either in a previous search, by recommendation, or an online version of a brick-and-mortar store.
(3) Freedom of action and the rewards to that action: most Nigerians in Nigeria have little scope for changing their situation to evade these policies; from the original position, I would not like to be in their situation. In converse, the problem of not being able to find customers is distinctly different: one may choose to sell something else, to a different market, and via a different medium. One of the risks of creating a business is that there may not be a viable market, but one of the rewards is profit when the market is viable. The risk / reward correspondence with consumers doesn't seem convincing: at best, the consumer can obtain what they wanted at a fair price; the upside is very limited.
That's not to say it may not be effective, on average, in limiting losses. But effectiveness is something distinct from fairness.
As long as businesses will be required to eat the losses caused by attempts to be 'fair' I predict this situation will continue.
You're making a utilitarian argument, but it seems predicated on some kind of zero sum, that the only way of protecting the world from Nigerian scams is to prevent consumers in Nigeria from being able to buy things from elsewhere. I question that assumption.
I'm sure there is at least one person in Nigeria that goes against the flow here and that is an honest person simply trying to get by but with the odds that bad you really can't fault the conclusion that Nigerian traffic so risky that the risks far outweigh the benefits.
Merchants typically run a very fine line between operating their business and having their accounts yanked due to 'excessive fraud', any measures they can take to protect themselves from this happening will be implemented without any remorse, it's a survival thing.
For the record, yes, we block Nigerian transactions, and several other countries besides.
How can dis even be possible? You mean not even one out of the possible millions in a day is legitimate? Haba!
It's sad, but it's really true.
The possible millions make use of free services they're not possible millions of e-commerce consumers.
You wish. If Nigeria had millions of legit e-commerce consumers the situation would be quite different.
There will never be "millions of legit e-commerce consumers" from Nigeria if the main e-commerce gateways such as PayPal continue to block the entire country.
They've already been excluded before they've started.
Obviously, a "which country to do business in" decision is not done by algorithm. That doesn't mean Paypal isn't using objective metrics to make that decision.
What I dislike about the attitude of many businesses
towards Nigeria is the way they just dismiss the
country with a wave of their hand.
I get lots of ssh connection attempts and spam from the third world. I don't regularly communicate with anyone there. It would fabulous if there was a way I could tell my servers to block traffic from vast ranges of IP addresses that are known to be located outside of the first world.
Some people wouldn't be able to email me or read my website, but it would be a good tradeoff for me.
Think of it this way: imagine that paypal suddenly
decided to exclude Arizona from using Paypal because
it has a higher statistical likelihood of fraud.
The scam artists and the spammers will learn how to spoof their IP address. Or, just start using VPNs and proxies. It doesn't matter to them as they will find a way around, precisely because their livelihood depends on it.
On the other hand, the genuine users will be the one who suffer. They simply won't have the inclination to spend their entire time trying to engage in subterfuge against your "defenses". They'll throw their hands up. Grumble a bit. Say fuck you for a while and just give up in sheer hopelessness.
At the end this won't punish the sp/cammers. You'll end up targeting whose only crime is honesty. I don't think that's what you want.
There's a saying where I live that sums this up; "locks only exist for the innocent".
They could use VPNs and proxies, and that would shift the focus from the third world to VPNs and proxies in the first world.
If those operators don't comply, you could have them IP filtered also. But also - we have better options for dealing with nasty traffic when the originating IP is in the first world.
It doesn't matter to them as they will find a way
around, precisely because their livelihood depends
on it.
On the other hand, the genuine users will be the one
who suffer.
If you make just the right investments in nigeria then over time this will change. Everything else is temporarily. You might even figure out a way to use machine learning to statistically weed out the spammers visits by looking at how and where they click (bots and humans), but that peace will last for only so long.
The lasting solution would be to address the root cause of this, which is something I just don't know and understand. (I might not know what the solutions are, but I can see what isn't a solution)
Any given day I can dive into my spam folder and see at least a dozen of Nigerian scam offers, perhaps that explains the general perception. While on the dawn of the Web there was a number of places deemed to be sources of fraud (e.g. much of Eastern Europe), most of them got a grip on electronic crime, and their reputations improved. It's long overdue for Nigeria to get their act together.
What do you mean by get their act together? In my experience living in a third world country, it's hard enough to get the establishment to prosecute violent crimes. So I'd say as an ordinary citizen it's pretty much impossible to get anyone who matters to take electronic crime seriously.
Elephant & Castle was once an area in London where you couldn't get insurance easily, if at all.
It took the founder of a business incubator there to call a few friends in the insurance business with the same argument: "how will you ever take advantage of this market if you don't start somewhere? I will do whatever it takes on my premises for you to be comfortable giving me insurance. After you're comfortable with doing business with me, you'll have first-mover advantage in the area." It worked.
Of course, insurance is a slightly more competitive business than online payments.
And I see Oo's point in the addendum too. Running a business is time-consuming. Saying you've identified a market gap so you should start ANOTHER business is patronising and ridiculous. And whether or not there is more fraud from any specific country doesn't excuse the laziness of a policy that unfairly prejudices and overburdens honest businesspeople from that country.
Local whitelisting companies. Paypal and all other payment providers partner with local companies who claim that will pre-screen people who want to use paypal. These companies then use whatever methods they want (visiting the homes, checking bank accounts, escrow) to verify that the people will be valid paypal customers.
Paypal then does not need to verify thousands of people, it just needs to trust this company, and if the company fails a few times, it's replaced and pays some kind of penalty.
Also, amounts can be limited to some value that the verification company holds in escrow for paypal. Something that moves the burden of verification to people who are aware of how things work locally.
In that as citizens they should support politicians that take 419/spam/fraud issues seriously?
Were there no collective responsibility, then all arguments of the kind that the West owes/owed something to Africa for its colonial misdeeds, would even be less valid (as hardly anyone involved with that is around any more...).
(and just to clarify, I do think the West owes something to Africa, but collective responsibility can't go one way only. Being responsible, and building a reputation for it, is as important for nations as it is for businesses, teams and individual employees)
I couldnt imagine how frustrating it would be for that to happen regularly
Do you have any data to verify your claims?
However, I can't offer a better solution than taking a civil approach to vetting/rejection in case the customer is a real, innocent human being. And that doesn't seem like much of a solution.
You can then develop an API (that does the verifications and flags orders)etc for merchants to use together with the payment gateways to be covered by the policy.
This sort of fraud isn't something everyone does, but everyone's aware of it - it's certainly a part of popular culture. For example, see the song 'I Go Chop Your Dollar', performed by a popular Nigerian actor:
Which must be contributing to the online crime coming from this countries, since if you are already treated as a thief, why not just be one? :)
There is absolutely no logic to that statement.
Not being allowed to do business on a site because your country has a statistically high incidence of fraud is not the same as being treated as a thief.
Being treated as a thief would mean to be wrongfully prosecuted for a crime you did not commit, not being allowed to do business in the way that you prefer is not a punishment, it's an inconvenience, even if it is a substantial one.
'blame the merchant' seems to be the approach taken by most companies that are in the payment chain, our payment processor actually blocks a whole slew of countries and it might lose us the occasional sale but at least we get to stay in business.
Going to an analogy which might make it easier to understand, say you live in Oakland, CA, and by law you can not open a bank account or possess a weapon because your neighborhood has statistically higher crime rate.
I understand people usually don't care much being on the other side of the fence, you lose what, 10% of sales maximum. But please try the mental exercise of being a well-intentioned business on another side.
I'm not sure I follow.
Also, I'm Brazilian and Paypal accepted my locally issued credit card just fine.
Something like: a bunch of reasonably well educated people with internet access, unable to participate in legitimate web commerce, are more likely to pursue illegitimate ways to make money online. Sort of the same problem you had in the 1990s with a bunch of viruses and scams coming out of Eastern Europe.
Well, lucky for you then that Brazil is included. I really wish for the situation to change for the better, eventually. But it seems rather stupid, from a programmer point of view, to ban hundred plus countries because you can not fix exploitation of your system by several criminals. Somewhat egocentric, "ah fuck those countries who cares about them anyway", the problem can only get worse.
Internet does not know about borders, and you can't establish ghettos on Internet - it comes biting in the ass later.
Because that would just perpetual the problem.
http://www.perimetec.com/7-Things-You-Didnt-Know-About-Email...