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Internet fraud warning
4:46pm Sunday 13th July 2008
Comments (1)POLICE in the Vale are repeating their warning about the dangers of internet fraud.
It follows a report of a Vale woman, aged in her 50s, sending £3,600 by electronic transfer to a Cypriot account after she followed up an internet advertisement from a Chicago-based company called Havoc Consultancy Group.
She reported the incident to police when a cheque she received was returned by her bank and not cashed.
Sergeant Paul Revers said: "The internet provides criminals with an easy way to contact thousands of people at a time.
"Examples include emails offering the chance to take part in money making schemes, or claiming you are the winner of a prize draw.
"You can avoid being a victim of internet fraud by remembering that if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
"You should take your time making decisions that involve parting with money and get independent financial advice before making investments.
"You should only do business with companies that you recognise or know of by recommendation by someone you trust.Certainly do not judge a company on how 'professional' their website looks.
"If in any doubt, you can check a company is genuine by looking them up on Companies House or the Financial Services Authority websites - if they are they will be registered "People should never send money or provide banking details to any unknown individual or organisation. The message to members of the public is to avoid any offers of this type.
"Unfortunately this lady has sent £3,600 to Cyprus in good faith but has not heard anything.
"If anyone has any concern then they should contact their local trading standards department or Consumer Direct on 08454 04 05 06 for further advice."
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Felisia, USA says...
10:14pm Sun 13 Jul 08
If you have no good fraud prevention plan in place, one order of 300$, purchased in your store with a stolen credit card and shipped then; YOU will have to pay back the legit card holder (i.e. refund their card) the full 300$ plus you will be out of your product as it was already shipped to the fraudster. The reason you have to pay is because this is a transaction without the card holder present and with no signature. Two of these orders a month and you get the point, unless you're making millions it's not even worth thinking about it.
So for 10, 000$ in sales a month it's, with Yahoo Merchant solutions it's $189.95 Yahoo! fee + 290$ (max. PayPal)= 479.95$ for 10K of sales, which is awesome because they cover all fraud.
Phone number for business solutions for Yahoo! is (866) 562-7219.
http://smallbusiness
.yahoo.com/ecommerce
/plans.php
plus PayPal fees will be 1.9%-2.9% depending on the amount of transactions (more transactions= better rates).
I've been working in the online fraud prevention business for ever 4 years. You can buy stolen credit cards in bulk (packages of 1K) for a dollar each, add 50 cents to a dollar to get 1 thousand stolen numbers + correct billing addresses, names, and phone numbers. So that correct billing, with good number but then they put a frauster shipping address. That's how it works :) but back to the point, I'd go with a payment solution that takes care of order verification and all after all do you really want to be calling dozens of customers a day to verify if the order is legit? And if you do call how will you know it's legit? And remember, any order with a different shipping address could be fraud....
I'm all for independent banking and such and really PayPal has ISSUES, serious ones, they have power and use i, many people in business are having their PayPal accounts frozen and canceled for no reason: be prepared, it's not just stupid or bad people getting suspended accounts. I won't rant on about this, search online for more info. Keep in mind that as soon as you reach 150$ in your PayPal account transfer it out daily, it's free of charge and the smart thing to do, you have no reason to trust PayPal more than 24 hours at time. I'm speaking from experience, it's very frustrating to not be able to withdraw anything from PayPal for 6-12 months and need to get a lawyer *yawn**yawn*. Be sure to have a back up PayPal account, associated to a different credit card and phone number and preferably address (use a PO BOX, work address, etc), so if that one goes down you're back in business. Also if you have a middle name use it on your second account so instead of Tom C. Johnson just put Carl Johnson, they can't really verify your name, system verifies numbers only (so the numbers in your address, phone number and credit card).
Hope this helps!
Felisia