One thing I will say for Maxmind is that their API was exceptionally good at picking up anonymous proxies like Tor.
I dealt with a ton of fraud a couple of jobs ago and being able to eliminate credit card transactions for people on Tor was huge in cutting down on charge backs from fake card use. The minFraud API was really beneficial as well.
I don't doubt that there are a lot of baddies using Tor (and I wouldn't be surprised if that was the majority of Tor users in some cases). It's a shame though that cutting off Tor access is the solution. A very reasonable one from a business standpoint, but unfortunate.
Doesn't have to be a majority of Tor users, if the tiny minority of actors are flooding tons of stolen cc transactions. A normal person may make an online purchase a day or so, while someone trying to get as much value as possible out of a bunch of stolen cc may just spam a lot of transactions.
For the server seeing the incoming cc purchase requests, it's still majority fraud...
Well, I am sure MaxMind provides a lot of value for many use-cases. However, I just need something very basic (country, city, lat and long) and getting this "out of the box" from Google's LB is blessing for me.
The author does specify that for his own needs, which was basically adding 3 headers to requests, the offering was not worth it. He also does explicitly say that MaxMind is very good. So I don't think he was unfair at all in the post.
I dealt with a ton of fraud a couple of jobs ago and being able to eliminate credit card transactions for people on Tor was huge in cutting down on charge backs from fake card use. The minFraud API was really beneficial as well.
Don't sell the offering short.