The notorious cesspool of fraudsters, which is expanding along with the global rise in internet usage and online sales, is looking for a loophole in whatever system they can find to take advantage of anyone who takes (or uses) credit cards. Almost everyone connected to a sizable online business is aware that without fraud prevention measures in place, the business is set up for big financial losses. We have identified a few trends that ought to be beneficial for anyone managing an online store.
identifying a dishonest customer
Most people who make fraudulent internet purchases follow certain recognisable behavioural patterns. In the vast majority of cases we come across, the person trying to place a fraudulent order has either stolen someone else’s credit card (often from a restaurant or retail store) or has bought a list of credit card information from a black market for identity theft. In those situations, the fraudster probably just has his credit card information and expiration date to prove his identity. In certain instances, the dishonest consumer was diligent enough to obtain the three-digit CVV number off the back of the credit card that was taken. It is rather easy to determine that the customer is using a stolen credit card in either of these scenarios. If he is unable to confirm the billing address for the credit card, you probably have a dishonest client.
For obvious reasons, dishonest clients typically prefer to avoid contact with the company they are trying to con. They give a non-working phone number when they register for a customer account. We frequently even observe phoney area codes being utilised in phone numbers supplied by dishonest clients. Customers who shop at our online store must provide an email address. Most scammers choose one of these no-fuss email addresses because free public email addresses (like those from Yahoo.com, Hotmail.com, or Gmail.com) make it impossible to identify their owners.
In our experience, the most blatantly dishonest consumers also tend to be the most ignorant. We frequently get emails from consumers asking if we accept credit cards and then requesting a list of the goods we carry. It’s obvious from the emails that they are looking for ways to defraud people. Other fictitious consumers will inquire about ordering multiples of a particular item from our website and inquire about our acceptance of foreign credit cards. These emails generally include a statement that the sender is purchasing items for a good cause and use a kind name (such “Doctor Johnson” or “Pastor Murphy”) in the hope that the proprietor of an online store will not suspect fraud. Since most of the “Doctor Johnsons” we run into seem to have poor grammar and poor spelling, I’m very sure that online businesses don’t often fall for those ploys.
In comparison to the ordinary consumers I’ve outlined, there are certain fraudsters that are more intelligent and courageous. Customers that use stolen credit cards have been seen communicating with us using legal phone numbers and email addresses. Sometimes we don’t realise the customer was truly using a stolen credit card until after the product has been delivered. One instance included a consumer whose billing address didn’t line up with the address the credit card company had on file. When the consumer was contacted by phone, he casually provided a different billing address. The order was dispatched despite the fact that the alternate billing address was incorrect due to a bug in our merchant account system. The outcome was a free set of football jerseys worth $600 for a thief in Dallas, Texas. Another con artist placed an order for gym bags and asked for them to be delivered the next day to Miami, Florida. When she was called and informed that her check had to pass the bank before her order could be shipped, she wasn’t deterred. She persevered and mailed a fake check from an erroneous account.
Here are some guidelines that should aid in preventing client fraud at your business’ online store.
Common Fraud Indicators
Requests for expedited shipping are the most typical element of fraudulent orders. When viewed from the viewpoint of a thief, requesting overnight shipment is one of the best ways to get an order picked, packaged, and left the warehouse without a thorough check to confirm the order. At our online store, we see overnight shipping on almost all fraudulent orders. Due to the fact that they aren’t truly paying for the transaction, people who place fraudulent orders frequently have no care for price. For customers who order a lot of merchandise, most stores give discounts. It raises questions about a customer’s motivations when they come into our store and buy fifty basketball jerseys at full price without first phoning to inquire about a discount.
The location of a customer when an order was placed can be determined by looking up the IP address of the customer. Many bogus orders from Ghana and Nigeria have been sent to us. The potential thieves set up a network that enables them to have goods delivered to a US location, then have them sent to them overseas or sold there, with a portion of the sales going to the original criminal who placed the purchase. Usually, the order is sent to an empty residence or business location, or after UPS or FedEx have delivered the package to the shipping address, someone in the fraud network steals the item. We have identified a link between fraudulent orders sent to Miami from computers in Venezuela. Nearly 20% of the orders done on our online store with Miami shipping addresses are fake and were made with a stolen credit card from Venezuela or another Latin American country.
Reduce Fraud in Your Online Store: How to Do It
International fraud can be easily avoided by preventing visitors from specific nations from accessing your website. Our web server was configured to prevent consumers from Ghana and Nigeria from accessing our business after we discovered a list of IP addresses that come from those nations. It also cuts down on the amount of time we have to spend looking into and cancelling orders that we find to be fraudulent. Not only does it significantly lower the danger of getting taken by someone placing a fraudulent order from there. You can successfully prevent the majority of users from visiting your website from outside of the United States if you don’t want to take the chance of shipping to locations outside of the country.
You can still lower your risk if you’re committed to helping the world community. Any order that comes to us from a nation other than the United States, Canada, or the United Kingdom must be dispatched to an address that has been verified by PayPal or the credit card issuer. An online store owner can feel secure shipping foreign orders to a recipient who has properly paid for the item and isn’t using a stolen credit card by maintaining such a strategy in place. It is now simple to get in touch with the bank that issued any card bearing either the Visa or MasterCard brand.
Security options for merchant accounts
Merchant accounts give business owners the ability to configure security parameters to detect billing address or CVV inconsistencies, highlighting orders placed by customers using stolen credit cards. Make sure your merchant account verifies the billing address and zip code provided to you by any new customer using a credit card in order to prevent fraud.
Payment Guidelines
It is advisable to put regulations in place that prevent your business from shipping things to someone who has no intention of paying if you accept payment methods other than credit cards. Ask for check payments to clear prior to shipping an order if a consumer hasn’t built credit with your business. Checks have been known to bounce more than five business days after being placed, and once a check even bounced after our bank’s customer service reported it had cleared. The fact is, without checking directly with the other bank, it’s almost impossible for your bank to inform you whether a check has cleared an account at another bank (especially if the banks are in different states). The customer can pay with a credit card or expedite a money order to you if he needs the thing right away. To make sure you have the money in hand before shipping an order, you can use employ wire transfers or WU money transfers.
Conclusion
Some of these lessons were costly for our business to learn the hard way, which cost us thousands of dollars. It is well worth the trouble to take the effort to make sure that your fraud protection procedures are reliable. Hopefully, your company has benefited from the advice and recommendations in this article. For more details CVV shop
