this is how i got my start in programming, eventually leading to working in finance and now in gamedev for a AAA. many of the programmers i worked with as a teenager to build neopets automations are in similar places. i have so many stories and even met my ex wife of ten years through the community!
oh and i regret all the duping glitches i found and exposed and stuff im sorry
Just to make a pedantic point, SSNs do not indicate US citizenship or nationality. Permanent residents (green card holders) and those on temporary work visas receive SSNs.
Interesting! Over the last few years, as popularity has seemingly increased, I've noticed more and more the use of bots to speed up the checkout process and ensure that fans don't miss out on "drops".
Did you see any of this while you were working there, and did you work on anything to try and combat this? Very curious as to whether this is recognised and active measures are put in place to discourage the behaviour.
Nope. Big drop days where always sold out in minutes if that. The main thing we would do is add additional capacity before launch or for certain releases limit the amount in any one particular basket. Other than that we'd ban IPs that were hammering the site but didn't look out for anything automated. If the money cleared for the transaction then we delivered.
We never saw anything particularly weird (like a whole size run shipping to one address) from 2008 - 2013. The site itself ended up sold to ASOS after that and they took it all in-house until they eventually killed it [1].
