[KomoD]

> it's more likely intended for something else and is infected with malware / some intern being cute

Nah, DO offers free credits so threat actors just keep abusing that, it's really easy to make (or buy) tons of fresh trial accounts.

[djkurlander]

Ah, that makes sense. I’ve been wondering why DigitalOcean has so much of the bot traffic.

[TurdF3rguson]

Hmm, I'll try to do it and report back on how easy it was.

[djkurlander]

Thanks. I'd like to better understand the origin of DO's bot activity, and look forward to your report!

[TurdF3rguson]

Actually it looks like it's because DO accepts Paypal, most hosts will require a credit card because of PP fraud but I guess they're going for markets where it's not common to have one. They do have free credits but PP billing requires a $5 charge which is already higher than a lot of other VPS plans.

[KomoD]

No, it's not really because of PayPal. You can verify with a card, and stolen (or virtual) cards are cheap and easy to get.

Even if you do the PayPal way and pay $5, that's still better specs and lasts longer than what you get with a $5 VPS, because the trial credit is $200 for a few months (or if you go the commonly abused method: GitHub student, you can get $200 for a year).

And then combined with poor anti-fraud, poor abuse handling

[TurdF3rguson]

I think it's probably harder to sign up for hosting with a credit card than you think. It was a struggle for me until I managed to get a secured credit card (A deposit is made against the limit) which is very different from a debit card (Almost nobody accepts these) or a virtual card (these were impossible for me to get)

[KomoD]

I didn't specify credit card and what do you mean almost nobody accepts debit cards? My entire life I have pretty much only used debit cards everywhere and not once have I had an issue, especially not at hosting providers. Hetzner, AWS, Azure, DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, GCP, I can keep going, all of these have accepted my debit cards.

And I was also not just guessing when I said those things, I have been in those circles previously.