Tag Archives: fraud

Protecting Your Personal Financial Information Online

Posted by on September 8, 2011 No comments

We live in the age of technology and I’m sure anyone would say the same. Because of technology, most consumers have a great source of income. On the other side of the coin however, because of technology, the world now has cyber criminals. That’s right, the world of internet scams and fraud is not just a fairy tale. Unfortunately, cyber criminals steal $450,000,000.00 each year! So with internet fraud running rampant, how do you protect yourself against cyber criminals?

I’ve written most articles on this topic and covered the simplicity of ensuring you are on a secure server and phishing but are these really the only ways that cyber criminals steal from people? The easy answer is no! There are always new technologies that criminals will utilize to steal money from hard working consumers. However, phishing and non-secure web pages are some of the most common types.

Today however, we are going to talk a little bit about viruses and hackers! Consumers who own computers these days all know what an anti virus is. Well there is good reason for this. The reason is because viruses don’t only make your computer run slow or fail. They can also steal personal financial information right from your computer and send it all to the person that created the virus. This is the real danger when it comes to viruses.

Think about it, Americans tend to store their whole life on one computer. That computer will have credit card numbers, bank account information, social security numbers, addresses, contacts, employment information, etc… all of which is very profitable information to a cyber criminal! What would you do if someone got their hands on all of this information and your accounts all locked up and went negative, you lost your job due to the issues it has caused and your credit is destroyed. This is a reality for quite a bit of consumers. With that said, your first line of defense against cyber criminals is a good anti-virus!

Another common way that consumers become victims of cyber criminals is through email and other account hacking. Most Americans will use the same password for their facebook account as they do for their banking account and other important log ins. This is a huge mistake. This is because hackers will generally attack one account and utilize that accounts passwords to get into other accounts. So how do Americans protect themselves against being compromised due to password hackers? Well, this is simple, use different passwords for everything and change your passwords monthly. This will always keep the hackers at bay!

This article is brought to you by American Consumer Advocates! American Consumer Advocates specializes in fraud prevention and fraud loss recovery. If you were a victim of online scams, it’s time to give American Consumer Advocates a call and reclaim what is rightfully yours!

Protecting Yourself From Cyber Credit Card Crimes

Posted by on May 24, 2011 No comments

Internet fraud and identity theft are becoming much more highly sophisticated crimes of which we just cannot overlook any longer. Precautions must now be taken to prevent this wrongdoing from happening to us – and there are numerous methods you can take to protect yourself. Identity theft is described as the illegal use of your name, social insurance number, date of birth, charge card or any other personal identifying information, used without your approval or knowledge, to commit financial fraud in an attempt at ‘cloning’ you for the purpose of obtaining charge cards, loans, checks and other measures that allow the thief to go on a spending spree in your name.

This crime affected approximately 11.1 million people in the U.S., in 2009, and is increasing every year, in numbers much too high discount. It is also becoming extremely difficult to remedy this situation should you be targeted and unfortunately, it packs quite a punch to your wallet, among many other facets of your life. If the crime is not detected early enough, it could take months or even years to clean up the damage done. Estimations vary – but the latest costs involved in identity theft, or identity fraud, states these infractions have cost consumers, in the US alone, around $54 billion in 2009.

Credit card fraud is at the top of the list. Once the thieves get your personal information, they open charge cards with high limits, and before detected, can rack up quite the bill. A high number of these ‘thefts’ were initiated online, and it is not only credit card related – cell phones, auto purchases, and loans are up there on the list.

I’m not sure about you, but frustration and the feeling of personal violation are the emotions I feel related to this crime. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to have someone running around, using your name and spending cash, which unfortunately in the short term, is your responsibility, until proven otherwise.

A recent movie titled, The Michelle Brown Story (aired on Lifetime Channel) and based on a true story, depicted a young woman, Michelle Brown, whose identity, and worse, were stolen from her. Michelle was in the process of purchasing her first home and the loan documents required to close escrow were confiscated. So, along with her identity, credit card accounts, drivers license and social security number, the thief also had access to her checking and saving accounts – using thousands of dollars of cash to purchase items such as a new car and expensive clothing, etc. The criminal also became obsessed with her, wanting to become her, which caused Michelle much more difficulty than the average fraud. She (Michelle) had a very difficult time proving her own identity again, and in clearing her name. She also lost the purchase of her new home due to credit indiscretions, loss of funds from her account for the down payment, and many other problems related to this crime. The movie was based on a true story and if it doesn’t prompt you to take extra precautions to avoid this sort of thing from happening to you, I don’t know what will!

The problems these criminals create for victims are seriously harmful to credit ratings, your livelihood and the quality of your everyday life – not to mention massive expense in research and reporting, etc., and also time consuming to prove and remedy. To keep identity theft of your information from happening or to attempt to catch it early, follow these basic rules:

The first and foremost is keeping a close eye on your bank account regularly, at least daily. Consider using Mint to keep track of all your accounts in one place. Banks may also have fraud warnings you can attach to your account by request. My bank recently put a stop on my debit card for unusual activity, which was inconvenient because I was trying to make a purchase which was declined – and required a phone call to clear up, however they noticed a few charges that were irregular to my usual spending habits – and stopped all activity until I called and verified that the charges were legitimate. Banks are very good about watching unusual activity, and notifying you at once.

Also, charge card companies offer this option as well, called identity theft protection, or fraud detector – when you sign up for credit card accounts, or even for the ones you already have, be sure you opt for the ‘credit card fraud’ alert offered. And review your charge card account statements, very regularly.

Your credit report is also a great indicator, although a bit slower than the other methods, but it will disclose all information that isn’t charge card account or debit card related. There are many quick and immediate reporting agencies out there, namely Free Credit Report that can keep you updated on your credit report.

Internet scams and viruses are designed for accessing your personal information. Trojans get access to your information via emails, and if you open the infected email, the virus actually waits for you to access your bank account information and relays that information to the hacker that instigated this virus.

Worms are another method of Internet fraud, doing exactly what the name implies, worming itself onto your computer and turning off security software so that the hacker can access your information.

Several others exist that you should be aware – scams looking like friends in an effort to get you to turn over information to them – viruses that infect your files and can corrupt your hard drive which come from internet downloads and email. Phishing is also a difficult detection as this is the act of sending an email that resembles a bank (or other online merchant that you may use) email, asking you to log in by clicking a link attached to the email…. Once you click, the hacker has your personal info.

Remember – NEVER give your any of your private information to anyone in an email or online. My policy is just to make the call – do it over the phone if applying for credit or paying for something. It is just too risky and you can never be sure who is watching or how safe that site’s security is.
Unfortunately, this crime is only going to get worse before it gets better so it takes being highly aware, and never, ever clicking on links in your inbox or on the Internet that you have the slightest doubt is legitimate. Even if they come from friends! Many of my friends have been hacked into lately, and the hacker uses the friends email address to try to get you to click on the link that is attached. Don’t do it. It is much, much easier to avoid having your identity stolen, than to fix it after it happens.

By all means, if you haven’t already – purchase a high quality security suite such as Norton or McAfee and updated it regularly. Hackers can find their way around them so quickly that you must install the updates as soon as they are available. There are also some great free options like Microsoft Security Essentials, Avast! and AVG.

This article is brought to you by www.JEMCreditCards.com – Not Just Credit Cards, We Create Financial Security! compare credit cards including Chase cards, Discover cards and a lot more!

How To Detect And Prevent Credit Card Fraud

Posted by on May 23, 2011 No comments

Today businesses have shrunken and operate with fewer employees and are totally internet driven. With the increase of internet users, the potential market of online business has also grown, along with this the risks of phishing, online frauds or fake websites have also grown. Secured online payment is a concern for both the customers and the retailer. If you sell products online and accept charge card accounts perhaps you might have already faced charge card fraud. Fraudulent orders often results in huge losses: refunded sales, unsatisfied customers calling you and asking why you have charged the credit card. Such orders bring a lot of chargebacks: your merchant account can easily be terminated, you get chargeback fines and so on. In order to prevent charge card account fraud you must check each and every transaction that goes through. These are the most important things to check on an order to see if it is a legitimate order:

1. Checking the IP address of the customer is very important procedure, as IP address is an unique identifier on a network, issued by the Internet Service Provider. For i.e. if customer submits an order that has the USA billing address, but his computer’s IP address is from some African country – this increases a red flag.

2. Check customer’s real name and e-mail address. Often fraudsters enters one customer’s name for i.e. John Doe, while the e-mail address contains completely another name, i.e. JamesSmith@email.com . Possible fraud!

3. Analyze your webservers and merchant account’s logs to see if there were multiple attempts to order the product. Usually scammers have many stolen charge card accounts and try to use them to order the product. They enter one card number, it gets declined, then they enter another one that has a completely different customer’s name, it gets declined, so they take the 3rd card and try to order again until they get a success. Multiple attempts to order the product with different credit cards – huge fraud risk!

4. The email address awareness is also an important factor. Since the fraudsters rarely use a real email address – usually they use fake e-mail addresses – non-existent ones. So if the purchase confirmation e-mail sent to a customer bounces back to you – make sure to check the transaction more thoroughly. Huge possibility of fraud.

5. The shipping address must meet the cardholder’s entered address. If shipping address is different to the one entered by the cardholder – this displays a fraud possibility.

6. Whenever there is a doubt during the credit card processing, the charge card company or the holder must be called. The idea is to verify the customer – call a customer via phone and say ‘thank you’ for the order. This way you can see if the customer is a legitimate and if he has ordered the product.

There are many other factors that you could check when screening the orders, however, it is really hard to check and every transaction manually. These are just the simple guidelines on how to check the orders… Big online businesses have hundreds and thousands of orders per day, so it becomes impossible to check each and every transaction. That’s why such companies use payment processors that provide automated fraud screening – credit card account anti-fraud solutions. One of such companies is Click2Sell. It provides the credit card account processing services, but at the same time all orders are checked with hundreds of various parameters to see if a transaction is a real – legitimate customer. So you don’t have to manually check transactions yourself.

Make sure you use a good payment processing company that not only processes your card payments, but provides a real antifraud protection. This way your online business will be profitable and you won’t face any fraud related costs.

This article is brought to you by www.JemCreditCards.com – Not Just Credit Cards, We Create Financial Security! compare credit cards including Discover credit cards, Chase credit cards and much more!

Some Scammers Phish Using Fake Credit Card Statements

Posted by on November 1, 2010 No comments

If you worries of identity theft keep you awake at night, you might have something more to worry about: Your credit card statement may be a fake.

In September, past due personal credit card statements supposedly from Capital One began being delivered in mailboxes in Indiana. However, these statements are actually fakes. Instead, they are part of an elaborate credit card phishing scam meant to encourage victims (like you and me) to give their financial account information to identity fraudsters.

The fraudsters are cunning; these credit card statements look legitimate.

The risk that poses for consumers is obvious, as most people don’t look at their credit card statements carefully enough to detect a fake one from a real one.
All the trappings of a real credit card statement are prominent on these fake credit card statements. Some of the things victims are likely to be fooled by include a bar code, victim’s address, logo, and web address. There is also a customer service number you can call – a fake phone number that the scammers answer, of course. The fraudster hope to scare you into paying the money that is “past due”. If that doesn’t work, they hope that you call the number available on the statement, and give up personal information, making it easy to steal your identity.

One of the main reasons you might contact the identity thieves is that you might not even bank with the credit card issuer listed on the false bill. This should be the very first warning that this is a scam; if you don’t have an account with the “issuer”, don’t call.

Is Your Credit Card Statement Next on the List?

So far, the scammers’ credit card statements are limited to a rather local area. However, you never know when you could be next. In fact, what works in one region, is a gold-mine-in-training for fraudsters around the world. It’s fairly easy for a crafty and resourceful scammer to obtain a name and address. Getting specific credit card information, like full account number, expiration date, and even your security code, is more difficult.

Protect Yourself

If you want to protect yourself from a phishing scam like this, you will need to be very careful. Do not call the number listed on a bill that comes from an issuer that you don’t bank with. Also, avoid calling a number from a credit card statement that provides information about your account that you know to be false. Instead, look up the official customer service number on the web site. You should also refrain from giving full account numbers to those who contact you and ask for it. If asked for an account number, only give the last four digits. Your real issuer won’t need the full number. And, for email, do not click on links sent to you. Open a new window and log in to your account from the official home page.

If you suspect a phishing scam or any form of misrepresentation on your statement, call the official number of the credit card issuer (not the one on the suspicious statement), and then notify authorities. It’s better to be safe, rather than risk identity theft. Once your identity is stolen and your bank accounts empty, there is no guarantee that you’ll ever see your money again — or that a few years later, you won’t become a repeat victim.