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Showing 4 of 4 results by Mike Cameron
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Board Trading Discussion
Re: Risk of BTC in Web Hosting Business
by
Mike Cameron
on 25/07/2014, 14:42:10 UTC
I have been thinking of going in to Bitcoin webhosting myself, and thank you for the heads-up.

Bitcoin is not anonymous; only pseudonymous. If they are not using mixers or coinjoin, you can try coin tainting to black/greylist the spammer's coins. To do this, you would need to ask for a refund address so that you can safely return the coins (they will start mixing them; making assumptions will result in lost coins).

Black-listing is bad for Bitcoin in general though because it hurts fungibility. That said, encouraging coin mixing makes Bitcoin safer for all users because block-chain analysis becomes more difficult.

Do these users not need contact information to sign up? You can do confirmation e-mails like mailing lists if you do not already do that.

They are using free email address. We do receive email confirmation, but again the email addresses are disposable.
Post
Topic
Board Trading Discussion
Re: Risk of BTC in Web Hosting Business
by
Mike Cameron
on 25/07/2014, 06:06:32 UTC
Ouch - yeah, I'm not sure I would provide anonymous hosting service.

They can pay with bitcoin but they sure as hell better provide some proof of their identity before I would let them have access to a system capable of spamming (or scamming) others.

In credit card transaction, we can use the ID to verify the card holder name. However, in BTC case, there is no way to confirm that the ID received is indeed the real user.
Post
Topic
Board Trading Discussion
Re: Risk of BTC in Web Hosting Business
by
Mike Cameron
on 25/07/2014, 05:57:06 UTC
Oh, btw, given how this appears to be your first post and you link to a service, I'm guessing you yourself are nothing but a spammer.

I've removed the link if this is not acceptable.
Post
Topic
Board Trading Discussion
Topic OP
Risk of BTC in Web Hosting Business
by
Mike Cameron
on 25/07/2014, 05:36:43 UTC
My friend is in web hosting business accepting Bitcoin. There is an alarming level of customers using bitcoin spamming emails out from his servers. Due to the anonymous nature of BTC users, abuser signed in as another customers and continue the spam activities. Multiple servers have been taken down by network providers due to spamming activities.  Angry

I have been helping him to look for different ways to detect such users up-front during checkout. We are using FraudLabs Pro and it detects highly anonymous, blacklists and recurring abusers.

Are there other screening services we can use? Preferably with free plan like FraudLabs Pro.

Reference: http://www.fraudlabspro.com/tutorials/how-to-prevent-bitcoin-fraud