rainbore
9-19-02, 09:28 PM
I just thought I'd share some experiences about card fraud to remind all everyone that even those of us with very small business/websites on the backroads of the Internet can be victims of this crime.
We have a friend who owns a used bookstore in San Francisco. They started selling online about 3 years ago and they do pretty well. But last year they sold a rare $450.00 book to someone in Africa, only to be told some two weeks later that the purchase was fraudulent and they were liable for the chargeback. Since then, we have been extra careful to use the address verification on credit card transactions. This past weekend we got two orders from Canada for some obscure and (I'm a bit embarassed to say) slightly overpriced merchandise. In addition to the oddity of selling two items I really didn't expect to sell within 48 hours, what really caught my attention was some odd similarities between the two orders. Both were from addresses in Montreal, and although the names were different, they were both typed in all lower case and the telephone numbers were lacking hyphens in the same places. Sure enough, the address verification came up bad. So, if you're like us and own a very small business and process credit card transactions in-house, take the time to do the address verification checks frequently. If you want a quick test, enter the telephone number in Google. Google finds a name and address for about 70% of the phone numbers I've tried. Good luck!
Richard L. Trethewey
www.rainbo.net
We have a friend who owns a used bookstore in San Francisco. They started selling online about 3 years ago and they do pretty well. But last year they sold a rare $450.00 book to someone in Africa, only to be told some two weeks later that the purchase was fraudulent and they were liable for the chargeback. Since then, we have been extra careful to use the address verification on credit card transactions. This past weekend we got two orders from Canada for some obscure and (I'm a bit embarassed to say) slightly overpriced merchandise. In addition to the oddity of selling two items I really didn't expect to sell within 48 hours, what really caught my attention was some odd similarities between the two orders. Both were from addresses in Montreal, and although the names were different, they were both typed in all lower case and the telephone numbers were lacking hyphens in the same places. Sure enough, the address verification came up bad. So, if you're like us and own a very small business and process credit card transactions in-house, take the time to do the address verification checks frequently. If you want a quick test, enter the telephone number in Google. Google finds a name and address for about 70% of the phone numbers I've tried. Good luck!
Richard L. Trethewey
www.rainbo.net