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Comment by iancarroll | Hacker News Reader

Isn't this a bit risky? What happens if someone keeps it? 50TB is a lot more than $200.

The customer won't keep it because the Snowball contract will put them on the hook for it.

Whether the shippers do or don't keep it, there are much more valuable things shipped every day. Where do you think the gargantuan Catalyst and Nexus switches come from? The line cards in those things probably cost more than a Snowball device.

I think the difference in price between what it costs to get it shipped and the market price of the components (even if you just strip out the hard drives) is what makes it fraud-prone.

From my day job, I know this is an issue for mobile operators

It might not be the best idea to steal from someone who has your full name and credit card, which Amazon does for AWS customers as far as I know.

The way this usually goes is that you pay with a prepaid debit card (that doesn't verify name or address).

Then you get it shipped to a name and address that are not yours, and you intercept the package before it gets there.

It becomes even harder to trace if the name / address / card all match, for instance if you've taken out a credit card on your elderly neighbor's name

It has a kindle attached to it. Every kindle has a built in cell phone transceiver. I would not be surprised if they use that to send periodic location data.

I'm sure they don't cost Amazon $200 to produce, and assumably they can just bill corporate customers for them if they're not returned. Some amount of loss is probably included in the cost to consumers.

"The data will be 256-bit encrypted on the host and stored on the appliance in encrypted form", key is stored in KMS, according to https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-importexport-snowball-t...

I think the poster was talking about someone simply gutting the appliance for the 50TB drives. With a bit of fraud here and there on top.

From the looks of it the delivery provider is UPS, if they lose it or a rogue employee guts it during transit, I think AWS will probably have clauses in their contracts to go at them full pelt with a lawsuit

I assume they have your credit card and will charge you a larger amount if they don't get it back.

They charge $15/day, so I think the idea is that they'll keep charging you this until it's returned. In fact, if you have a need to do a "slow fill", it might make sense to hang onto this device for months at a time before sending them away.

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