Helped Stop Fraud Today

Got a hosting order yesterday afternoon.  (the ordering person came through our link in my signature on this forum -- we track such things).  Anyway, did a reverse lookup on the origin IP as we normally do and the location of the person ordering was in a state 1000 miles away from the billing info for the credit card.  This is a red flag.  Thus, we did not process the order.   We stopped and called the person listed on the card.  We got an answering machine, so we put the order on stand by.

Still feeling the order was probably fraudulent, my billing person called the customer again this morning.  This time, we reached the card holder.  The card holder had no idea about the order, and my billing person told them her card # had probably been stolen.  She called her bank and low and behold, there were 4 orders of web hosting on her card from the same day (Of course, we did not process the order, so our charge was not among the 4).

The customer thanked us profusely.  She said her bank told her to congratulate us for catching the fraud.  She said they were impressed that we were good enough to identify the order as fraud while 4 other web hosts had not. 

It is not hard though, you know, to catch fraudulent orders if you just use reverse ip tracking and basic intution.  Also, we do not do instant, automated setup any longer.  It's not worth the hassle of the charge backs for the fraudulent orders.

 

 

 

 

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