[autoexec]

I'm not sure why they'd try so hard to keep bots from paying them anyway. If someone wants to write a bot that constantly pays me good money I'm fine with that. I might rate limit it if the stream of payments coming in can't cover the cost of keeping the server from being DoS'd, but that's not going to inconvenience a human trying to submit a payment one time.

[slv77]

Bots use sites like this to validate lists of stolen cards with low dollar donations to validate the cards before using them on the target site. Without some one of protection sites like these are quickly flooded with fraudulent transactions and then fined and shut down by Visa and Mastercard.

[lapsis_beeftech]

This sounds like a problem where cryptocurrency could actually be the solution. Next time I want to make a charitable donation I will ask for an XMR address to preserve my privacy and work around commercial payment processor issues.

[lez]

I was thinking the same. Seems HN is now pro-bank and anti-cryptocurrency.

[FabHK]

HN is anti-nonsense, anti-hype, anti-crime, so, yeah, pretty anti-cryptocurrency.

[dlahoda]

until one's society started to collapse, one does not think crypto is good

[mynameisash]

When society collapses, will we still have reliable infrastructure (internet and electricity, to be specific) on which cryptocurrency depends?

[JimDabell]

If you have small payments that can be made by bots easily, then your service can be used by thieves as an oracle to determine which of their stolen credit card numbers still work. Then you get lots of chargebacks to deal with.

[op7]

Then when too many of the fradulent payments get charged back then your payment processor drops you

[michaelt]

Sure, chargebacks cost money.

You know what else costs money? When someone wants to give you money, and you misidentify them as a bot and refuse their money.

[Akronymus]

With donations being blocked you keep sitting at 0, with chargebacks you can actually go negative, in a potentially unbounded way.

[zinekeller]

I really hope that the sole reason that michaelt concluded this is simply due on not having any experience how to manage credit card payments (on merchant's side).

For those who does not handle these things: I am not sure on what processor Network Time Foundation is using, but Stripe's $15 fee is actually on the low side of chargebacks (some processors even use the fixed fee + percentage model). Worse, this is unconditional: if you somehow won this, you won't get the chargeback fee.

[bawolff]

Yeah, but one probably costs more money then the other, and it seems plausible its the chargebacks.

[jacquesm]

That's because the bots will use such services to 'taste' cards to see if they work. Then if they do the criminals can resell them for a higher value than for which they bought them for.

[bmacho]

[deleted]

[dietr1ch]

Well fraudsters need to have their time in sync for their business right? Who are you to deny their donations?

[mjhay]

Is there a problem with fraudsters donating to OSS projects?

[johnisgood]

Money is money.

How do you know the cash you are using is not "blood money"? Come on.