Regarding the Proxy
I just realized today that any criminal with $20 in a Paypal account could replicate my proxy strategy for overseas credit card usage. Linode takes minimal personal information and lets you choose the location of your server.
This isn’t in itself scary (you shouldn’t count on location for credit card security), but it does make it especially stupid that some companies are trying to use this as a fraud detection agent.
It’s one of those nets that only catches the good guys.