Fraud Prevention - Tips for WorldPay Clients
WorldPay supply very sophisticated, cutting edge card checking and
authorisation systems that enable you to trade online. These systems
have been developed over several years, use state of the art technology
and undergo regular scrutiny from our banking and other strategic
partners to ensure that they conform to their high standards. The
systems are modified regularly to incorporate not only, additional
functionality and flexibility, but also to build in additional checks to
ensure that your account is not compromised by fraudsters in the same
way as those operated by many other payment system suppliers.
WorldPay will be implementing even greater levels of fraud control by
the end of February 2001. Part of that exercise includes educating users
of these systems in how to spot potentially fraudulent transactions that
will not be detectable automatically (i.e. a cardholders card is stolen
by someone close to them, but they have not yet registered it as
stolen). Obviously our systems, being necessarily automated due to the
vast amount of transactions passing through them, can detect abnormal
usage patterns and check databases of previously fraudulent
transactions, but regular scrutiny 'by eye' assists to some extent in
isolating potentially fraudulent transactions that cannot be detected
automatically.
To this end, the following advice should assist in reducing your
minimal exposure even more, and we would advise that you implement your
own checking procedures to supplement ours, using this document as your
point of reference. Where appropriate, as in country mismatch between
cardholder and delivery address, we will warn you of transactions that
have cleared, that may warrant further scrutiny and commensurate action,
based on the knowledge and experience we have accrued.
- Most semi-serious fraudsters, who obtain their credit card
details from lists published on websites, or by using illicit
programs that produce lists of algorithmically allowable card
numbers, will attempt to mask their identity from later tracing by
obtaining an Internet connection via an ISP utilising dynamic IP
allocation (i.e. they get a different, randomly allocated address
every time they login), and by using as their email identity a
'free' address from one of a growing number of suppliers. Included
amongst these are the ubiquitous Hotmail and Yahoo Mail, but there
are some 10,000 others. While most users of these free addresses are
quite legitimate, caution should be exercised when an order is
received where the purchaser has entered one onto your payment form,
and a warning will be published on the transaction confirmation
despatched to you to assist you in this. Any follow up activities to
confirm identity prior to despatch of the goods are of course at
your discretion, and you may wish to restrict yourself to a checking
subset, based on the other criteria outlined below, if transactions
of this type are preponderant.
Customers who are particularly concerned, such as those shipping
'downloadable' goods, can apply to have all transactions arising
from users of these email addresses blocked at source, thereby
rendering the 'checking' automatic. Though we would advise that this
could significantly affect profitability. Finally, it must be noted
that although not all users of free email addresses are fraudsters,
most fraudsters use free email addresses, and most legitimate
transactions use email addresses assigned by their ISP, which are
normally traceable.
- We do not mandate display or capture certain items of
information on the payment form, but you may wish to reject orders
from purchasers who choose not to complete the form fully.
Especially contact detail fields, if you feel suspicious in any way
about the legitimacy of the purchaser (some pointers to this are
given below). As a side effect, you could even be alerting a genuine
cardholder in advance that their card is being used illegitimately,
so that they can notify their card issuer and have the card
'stopped'.
Customers being requested to ship orders outside their own country,
especially to known centres of Internet credit card fraud such as
the ex-Eastern Bloc and third world countries, may wish to stress
this particular check, as regardless of your ability to trace a
potential fraudster. Getting your goods back, may prove extremely
difficult in this circumstance, as even in your own country
prosecution and recompense for credit card fraud are difficult to
pursue, especially for (what are deemed by the authorities) low
value transactions. To close, obviously PO or 'drop' boxes are open
to abuse, and you should be wary of their users.
- You should be wary of orders that are outside your norm, for
example multiple purchases of an item normally only ordered singly
(e.g. 10 copies of the latest Britney Spears CD, or even 2
television sets), or purchases that vastly exceed the average value
of normal orders. Where you have regular purchasers, you should also
be wary of orders outside their norm.
- You should be wary of orders placed by purchasers in the middle
of the (their) night. Again, some of these may be legitimate, but
most won't be.
Note: Information and advice concerning transactions which may
potentially be suspect is supplied in good faith to our customers in
order to support them in deciding whether they wish to process the
transaction in question or raise further queries, but Worldpay cannot
guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information. Worldpay
cannot accept responsibility for the use of such information and the
customer shall indemnify WorldPay against any liabilities arising from
the customer deciding to accept or decline a transaction.
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