u/TeachingAway9654

I’m curious to know what sort of workarounds might be possible as this ID verification process rolls out on an increasingly massive scale.

My current interpretation is some sites give you the option to send a selfie or participate in an automated “enable your web cam” process. I could see some early days circumvention here where you have a set of fake materials ready to fake this. I don’t think it’ll work forever though and will become increasingly more difficult.

The more problematic one is a requirement to submit a picture of your ID. I’m at a total loss here on how to get around this. The only two options I can come up with are blatantly illegal and probably also blatantly illegal. Making a fake ID or purchasing an account which is already authenticated with someone else’s ID. Theoretically the legal risk on the second one is likely lower but still not ideal. The first option, a fake ID, is absolutely 100% illegal and if you do it there’s a perfect paper trail documented internally at these verification companies that you possess a fake ID and have used it for verification.

Would love to hear some bypasses from others in case I’m overlooking something!

I have read the rules.

Figured I’d share this in case others find it useful. It’s a scrape from 3000+ recent eBay sales focused on 3 different drive categories. 14, 16 and 18 TB because the $ per TB is the most favorable relative to the quantity sold.

The only caveat I want to point out is that the pricing data is slightly tainted by the fact that the scraping process did not account for scan results. This means some of these average price per TB values could be skewed. Like a 40k hours drive will sell for a different price than a 3k hours drive but my analysis sees them as the same. I think it’s still overall helpful though!

Any drive classified as like “broken” or “Parts Only” was excluded. Drives classified as “new” and “open box” ARE included.

The goal here for me was to create auction bid bands. Like min-max what the auction should end for to be considered a “good deal”. The idea here is you just bid on the auction listings with a value within the bands.

Pricing Breakdown (8TB -> 28TB):
8TB: $13.50/TB
10TB: $14.50/TB
12TB: $16.50/TB
14TB: $15.00/TB
16TB: $16.00/TB
18TB: $15.50/TB
20TB: $19.00/TB
22TB: $21.00/TB
24TB: $23.00/TB
26TB: $25.00/TB
28TB: $22.00/TB

Ideal Pricing Bands (14TB -> 18TB):
14TB: $180 to $195
16TB: $215 to $235
18TB: $240 to $260

Win stats:
14TB: 43 candidates -> $180 max wins 12 / $195 max wins 21
16TB: 20 candidates -> $215 max wins 7 / $235 max wins 9
18TB: 22 candidates -> $240 max wins 7 / $260 max wins 11

If you’re patient with the lower band value you’ll win about 1 in 3. If you use the max value you’ll win 1 in 2. You’ll have to decide if you’re willing to buy a 40k hours drive though, this will change the numbers.