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Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

If AWS was really clear about what you were spending then it would be easy to be running an app that tells you the AWS usage and alerts you of anomalous patterns.

My bank contacts me if there are any questionable transactions.

Surely AWS is capable of this?

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I think you would be shocked at how often banks have similar restrictions on corporate accounts. As would you be surprised at how often companies are hacked.

AWS Cost Explorer gives a pretty good breakdown. There’s also Cost Anomaly Detection https://aws.amazon.com/aws-cost-management/aws-cost-anomaly-...

In that world, you better make it very difficult to change your alerts downard: Otherwise, the very first thing a hacker would do is to take over the alert system, and only then start using your account for their profit-making ventures.

They do this. There's a fine place between balancing the overhead (contacting customers, monitoring) and false positives.

But if weird stuff happens, AWS will take action. I'm sure part of it is because they care, but another is because they don't want to get stuck holding the buck.

> Surely AWS is capable of this?

I'm sure they're capable of many things that they don't actually want to do.

AWS will tell you as much as you want to know about how munch you’re spending. Cost breakdowns and billing alerts are more configurable than you’ll see pretty much anywhere else. This is a miscategorisation of the problem with AWS billing. The actual problem - which is not misunderstood - is that it’s complicated. There’s a reason that AWS has an unwritten ‘one-time get out of jail free card’ system if you accidentally mess up and charge $50,000 to your corporate credit card. And there’s a reason that a condition of this escape hatch is that you set up billing alerts like you should as a responsible person hooking up a PAYG service to what’s sometimes an effectively infinite line of credit.

That's like saying the Internet will tell you all you want to know.

Yes, (most of) the detail is in the CUR/CBR - but you have to be smart enough to understand it.

It's misleading to say that AWS will tell you all you want to know. Try getting them to explain your network costs in detail using network load balancers in a simple email.

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