On Thursday morning, I received an e-mail from Walmart.com stating, ‘Congrats on creating your Walmart account.’ It looked legitimate, spot-on actually. I even hovered over the links to see the e-mail addresses to which they are linked — all legitimate, but I didn’t dare click, airing on the side of caution. The ‘Congrats’ message was sent…
Category: Fraud Prevention
5 Examples of Compelling Evidence to Fight Chargebacks
Chargebacks are the bane of an e-commerce merchant’s existence. Especially fraudulent chargebacks. E-Commerce merchants are not defenseless, however. We blogged back in April about how online merchants can fight chargebacks and friendly fraud with compelling evidence – and they are. With friendly fraud consistently increasing, coupled with more stringent chargeback regulations from the credit card…
Who’s Getting the Brunt of Online Fraud Attacks?
It is no secret that online fraud attacks are sharply on the rise, nearly 140 percent over the last year. It’s the unfortunate byproduct of EMV credit cards foremost, but consumers can also blame vulnerabilities in mobile commerce and aggressive hackers anxious to pounce on the penetrable card-not-present channel. According to a recent whitepaper from…
Facebook Marketplace Taught Lesson in Transaction Laundering
A couple of months ago, we blogged about the prevalence of transaction laundering – the act of using a legitimate merchant account to sell illegal and/or illicit products or services online. A week ago, Facebook debuted its new app Facebook Marketplace, and received a first-hand education in transaction laundering when it discovered a number of…
How Can I Protect My Business From Online Fraud?
Online fraud is a major world industry. The U.S. is still the prime target and small and medium-sized merchants are on their own. At last week’s Fraud 360 World Tour Boston, hosted by Kount, there were some alarming statistics revealed. One of them was the fact that 40 percent of U.S. retailers were utilizing EMV-ready…
Why E-Mail Fraud Still Works
Yahoo! became the latest internet giant to suffer a data breach and is expected to disclose the extent of the leak this week. According to CNN.com, 500 hundred million user accounts were compromised, meaning Yahoo! e-mail users if not already, are about to receive a barrage of requests and legitimate-looking proposals for their personal information.…
Think You’re Safe from Cybercrime? You’re Not
Our company, Instabill, recently sealed a partnership with an IT provider, NeoScope, whose hub is a short drive away from our offices. When it was made official, I figured the extent of our working relationship would consist of me filling out a support ticket when my desktop computer was misbehaving. One of their representatives, Craig,…
Phishing Attacks via E-Mail: Do Not Open
Because we are a high risk payment processor, we’re seeing an increase in phishing attacks by e-mail. Fortunately for us, each attack has been obvious, bordering on pathetic even. They’ve even given us a good laugh. We’re lucky, however. Because of what we do, we can spot the red flags of fraudsters and unsavory millennials…
We Think This Was a Fraudulent Website and Here’s Why
We could be wrong, but once in a while we’ll get a merchant account application from an e-commerce merchant, whose website raises red flags. We’re forced to play judge and jury on whether we go forward in the merchant boarding process or decide it is a fraudulent website. Within the last six months, one particular…
Transaction Laundering Doesn’t Always Involve Drug Sales
A merchant recently approached Instabill about finding a merchant account for his business in which he rented large dumpsters to contractors and consumers used for scrap materials or large amounts of waste. It sounded simple enough. In fact, we wouldn’t even consider it high risk – medium at best. We liked how the dumpsters had…