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A comment on Ask HN: How to provide a free trial without being abused?.

Re:Ask HN: How to provide a free trial without being abused? by cube00 on Friday March 25, 2022 @06:54AM (#30800593)
Limit their outgoing connections until they provide a CC number. Most software can be initially tested without needing to connect to the wider internet. Throw in plenty of /examples directories for the different applications you offer.

You could provide some approved outgoing connections to trusted plugin/package repos.

If you want to get stricter only allow incoming connections from the trial user's IP to stop them hosting scam landing pages.

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Re:Ask HN: How to provide a free trial without being abused? by anatolinicolae on Friday March 25, 2022 @07:14AM (#30800718)
> If you want to get stricter only allow incoming connections from the trial user's IP to stop them hosting scam landing pages.

This could actually be the easiest way to deal with it. You can technically remove the block via system firewall, but I guess the abuse is only for cloud VMs that Elest.io provides and not the BYOVM ones, so you can use provider firewall rules to enforce the limit.

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Re:Ask HN: How to provide a free trial without being abused? by js4ever on Friday March 25, 2022 @07:18AM (#30800740)
Indeed, no issues at all with BYOVM, and for other VM we have full control on the firewall from the cloud providers and we can block outgoing traffic and limit incoming traffic to the tester IP, I will definitely investigate this!
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Re:Ask HN: How to provide a free trial without being abused? by zulln on Friday March 25, 2022 @07:36AM (#30800853)
How often do one change IP when on cellular? I have no idea, but seems like it might become a problem. Probably worth the trade-off though.
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Re:Ask HN: How to provide a free trial without being abused? by js4ever on Friday March 25, 2022 @07:16AM (#30800729)
Very good ideas thanks!
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