I charge my customers through PayPal, but recently faced a fraud which previously had only heard about. Somebody registered a few accounts, paid online with paypal (as my service is only prepaid) and started making expensive long distance calls. In fact the IP registering the accounts was from Florida, and IPs making calls were from Africa. After about 20 minutes the first payment was reversed. Then a few times more payments were made, and every payment was reversed almost as soon as it was made. Payments were made from different PayPal accounts. And then I started getting emails from PayPal resolution center that some payments were made by users who didn't authorize them. Obviously either somebody was using stolen paypal accounts, or somebody knows that he can pay and reverse the payment and in the meanwhile make enough long distance calls. What is really fishy that reversals were made almost as soon as the payments were made, one after another. Those who are more experienced in this business, please advise how to avoid this type of fraud, and which service to use in place of PayPal, because PayPal doesn't seem the right payment solution for a prepaid VoIP service. Also now that they have all the payments put on hold and asking for a resolution, their resolution center is good only for shipped merchendise, not for online services. How would I prove to them that the buyer who is asking his money back has already utilized my service by making lot of international calls, which I now have to pay for to the carrier. -- Zeeshan A Zakaria -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20090830/8fd7e129/attachment.htm
On 31/08/09 2:45 PM, Zeeshan Zakaria wrote:> Those who are more experienced in this business, please advise how to > avoid this type of fraud, and which service to use in place of PayPal, > because PayPal doesn't seem the right payment solution for a prepaid > VoIP service. Also now that they have all the payments put on hold and > asking for a resolution, their resolution center is good only for > shipped merchendise, not for online services. How would I prove to them > that the buyer who is asking his money back has already utilized my > service by making lot of international calls, which I now have to pay > for to the carrier.I've used CDR for that and don't automatically accept payments. When we receive a payment we compare: 1. IP Address of user (whois normally gives approximate location) 2. Paypal account holder email (should match sign up email) 3. Countries for emails and ip address should match. 4. Initial payment should be $1-$2 (i.e. noone is going to sign up for a service and in order to test it put down $500 via paypal) If any of the above look suspect I ask the paypal account holder to email me and start looking at email headers to see how sus it looks. If it's a large amount then they have to have already been doing business with us successfully with small amounts - most scammers can't be bothered doing this. -- Cheers, Matt Riddell Director _______________________________________________ http://www.venturevoip.com/news.php (Daily Asterisk News) http://www.venturevoip.com/st.php (SmoothTorque Predictive Dialer) http://www.venturevoip.com/c3.php (ConduIT3 PABX Systems)
Disclaimer: I'm just a guy Step one seems to be to delay account activation on your end. ;) I do know that Les.net sits on payments from unverified paypal accounts for 14 days. With all the fraud going around these days you might have to prove that the buyer is the payer. I think you're limited in options: Logic (Don't let someone call from africa when they just registered from an IP in florida, maybe check the florida ip for an open proxy via an RBL list) Delays (sit on first payments for a few days) Try and Verify by phone or mail On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 7:45 PM, Zeeshan Zakaria <zishanov at gmail.com> wrote:> I charge my customers through PayPal, but recently faced a fraud which > previously had only heard about. Somebody registered a few accounts, paid > online with paypal (as my service is only prepaid) and started making > expensive long distance calls. In fact the IP registering the accounts was > from Florida, and IPs making calls were from Africa. After about 20 minutes > the first payment was reversed. Then a few times more payments were made, > and every payment was reversed almost as soon as it was made. Payments were > made from different PayPal accounts. And then I started getting emails from > PayPal resolution center that some payments were made by users who didn't > authorize them. > > Obviously either somebody was using stolen paypal accounts, or somebody > knows that he can pay and reverse the payment and in the meanwhile make > enough long distance calls. What is really fishy that reversals were made > almost as soon as the payments were made, one after another. > > Those who are more experienced in this business, please advise how to avoid > this type of fraud, and which service to use in place of PayPal, because > PayPal doesn't seem the right payment solution for a prepaid VoIP service. > Also now that they have all the payments put on hold and asking for a > resolution, their resolution center is good only for shipped merchendise, > not for online services. How would I prove to them that the buyer who is > asking his money back has already utilized my service by making lot of > international calls, which I now have to pay for to the carrier. > > -- > Zeeshan A Zakaria > > _______________________________________________ > -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- > > AstriCon 2009 - October 13 - 15 Phoenix, Arizona > Register Now: http://www.astricon.net > > asterisk-users mailing list > To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: > http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users >-------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20090830/efa37892/attachment.htm
On Aug 30, 2009, at 7:45 PM, Zeeshan Zakaria wrote:> I charge my customers through PayPal, but recently faced a fraud > which previously had only heard about. Somebody registered a few > accounts, paid online with paypal (as my service is only prepaid) > and started making expensive long distance calls. In fact the IP > registering the accounts was from Florida, and IPs making calls were > from Africa. After about 20 minutes the first payment was reversed. > Then a few times more payments were made, and every payment was > reversed almost as soon as it was made. Payments were made from > different PayPal accounts. And then I started getting emails from > PayPal resolution center that some payments were made by users who > didn't authorize them. > > Obviously either somebody was using stolen paypal accounts, or > somebody knows that he can pay and reverse the payment and in the > meanwhile make enough long distance calls. What is really fishy that > reversals were made almost as soon as the payments were made, one > after another. > > Those who are more experienced in this business, please advise how > to avoid this type of fraud, and which service to use in place of > PayPal, because PayPal doesn't seem the right payment solution for a > prepaid VoIP service. Also now that they have all the payments put > on hold and asking for a resolution, their resolution center is good > only for shipped merchendise, not for online services. How would I > prove to them that the buyer who is asking his money back has > already utilized my service by making lot of international calls, > which I now have to pay for to the carrier.Despite what PayPal and any of the other processors tell you in their marketing material, there is very little protection for online merchants. The only way to be mostly sure, is to accept cash or wire transfers. Having said that, you might want to look into MasterCard's SecureCard program (http://www.mastercard.com/us/merchant/solutions/mastercard_securecode.html ). I don't remember the exact details when a physical product is not involved, but the general idea is that if you enroll in the securecard program, you will be covered from cardholder unauthorized chargebacks, Visa has something similar. AmEx has a number you can call and they will verify transactions over $250 with the card holder. You might also want to consider shipping a welcome packet to the customer, that may cover you under PayPal's physical goods terms. -- Eric Chamberlain, Founder RF.com - http://RF.com/