swandive

We've caught someone in Vietnam using a stolen credit card to make a couple of purchases on our site. The genius used his work email. We contacted his employer, they confronted him, and he admitted to the fraud.

That being said, he is now refusing to pay for the purchases he's made. We've given him multiple chances to right his wrong, but he continues to argue.

I'm tired to wasting time with the emailing back and forth, and have decided to turn him in.

The problem is, I don't know how.

Is there a proper procedure to follow?

Thanks in advance.

I am not a coder, and I would like to get HN’s advice.

Our website is a marketplace for digital downloads. The entire system is built on Laravel, and we’re currently looking into options for adding in a blog and tutorial section that will require a CMS.

That said, our dev is recommending that we use Craft (https://buildwithcraft.com/) as the CMS for the blog, tutorials, and for the rest of the site. We'll then move the Laravel system that handles our user system and products into a subdomain. It would look something like browse.oururl.com instead of oururl.com/browse.

He said the only other option is to hack something together using Laravel Bootstrap, (https://github.com/davzie/laravel-bootstrap) or something similar, for handling the blog and tutorials. The drawback is that it wouldn't be as robust.

Should we be concerned about using a subdomain for this purpose? Will there be any performance issues? SEO issues? Low T issues?

Maybe we’re making a mountain out of an ant nipple, but it's hard not being a coder and not knowing any better. I though I’d ask HN’s advice before giving the go ahead.

Thank you in advance for your advice.

-T

Any ideas why we'd start receiving abnormal direct traffic to our site after testing out a Facebook ad for one day?

Our traffic isn't huge, but on a typical day we receive around 300 direct hits with a 32% bounce rate.

After running the Facebook ad for 24 hours (it then expired), our direct traffic went to around 800 hits with an 86% bounce rate.

It appears that all of the new direct traffic is from the US, but it's from pretty obscure locations.

Any ideas?

Thanks, T

It was brought to our attention that our files were being illegally posted on www.gfxtra.com. After researching the domain, we sent out 15 DMCA's for each file to both Cloud Flare and LeaseWeb. Here are their responses...

LeaseWeb:

Unfortunately, we cannot handle your request as the mentioned website is being published and protected by the CloudFlare network: 1. The domain is being hosted on CloudFlares nameservers. 2. The domain name resolves to IP addresses under CloudFlares control. 3. When the website is entered in a browser, the browser connects to a CloudFlare IP address.

In LeaseWebs opinion, websites published and protected by CloudFlare,are CloudFlares responsibility. CloudFlare has a direct relationship with the website owner, since the website owner is CloudFlares customer. This puts CloudFlare in the position where they can contact the website owner directly. Also, with the domain name hosted on their name servers and the website being published through their IP’s, they have all the tools at their disposal to remove the website from the internet may the website owner refuse to cooperate. By pointing complainers towards LeaseWeb, CloudFlare is walking away from their responsibility

Cloud Flare:

Please be aware CloudFlare offers network service solutions, including a reverse proxy, pass-through security service and a content distribution network (CDN). Because CloudFlare is a reverse proxy, our IP addresses appear in whois and DNS records for websites using our services. CloudFlare is not a hosting provider, and we do not have access to our customer's content.

More and more of our files keep showing up on the site while both companies continue passing the buck.

What is the best way to deal with this issue?

Thanks for you help!