Hacker News Reader

There's a lot of assertion here and the other article that this fraud and abuse but is there any evidence of that?

A simpler explanation is that that this is just a resale market.

From talking with some of the companies experiencing this, I can confirm that a portion of it is actual credit card fraud. Tokens have become a pseudo-currency, making them a prime target for abuse.

Some of the abuse is more benign, but there is also real fraud through chargebacks, account takeovers, and stolen credit cards.

When you say a portion is that more like 1%, 5%, 20%, 50%, or 90%?

I don't have exact numbers here, and it varies by company, but a rough guess is around 10-20%. This might be a bit biased because the companies willing to talk to me are probably seeing the worst of it.

Also, outside the labs, most of the companies I've talked with have shut off free tiers and free credits entirely because the abuse is so bad.

Any situation where you can extract a benefit from a stolen credit card and then sell that benefit before the chargeback renders it moot will have some fraud-based usage.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com