ECommerce: How to Protect Your Online Store from the Internet Burglars, Part 4 (final)

How to Protect Your Online Store from the Internet Burglars, Part 4 (final)

Written by Lynne Schlumpf

Thanks for joining me for Part 4 and repparttar

final part of this article about how to protect your online store from Internet thieves. Now, I’ll tell you some true stories about how we put these methods into practice to save ourselves thousands of dollars, and we got a good laugh to boot!

Here are a couple of true stories for you:

1. A man in England ordered $27,000 worth of repparttar 109062 latest AMD K7 CPUs and motherboards. He gave his REAL address, his real phone number on repparttar 109063 order. Boy, was he surprised to get a phone call from repparttar 109064 United States asking him to verify repparttar 109065 order. He sounded really scared and mumbled something about someone playing a trick on him, that no- he did not order any computer stuff on repparttar 109066 Internet. Duh! American Express and repparttar 109067 Justice Department got to know that boy really well!

2. Someone in Thailand ordered about $3,000 worth of computer parts. The ship to address was his home in Thailand, and repparttar 109068 bill to was some poor guy in New Hampshire. After calling Mastercard services, we were able to identify repparttar 109069 card as stolen. The guy in New Hampshire was not aware that his credit card number had been "lifted". Mastercard promptly cancelled repparttar 109070 card. We emailed repparttar 109071 guy in Thailand and told him repparttar 109072 credit card number he was using was on repparttar 109073 "list" of stolen card numbers. He promptly sent an email back (from his free email service there) and cussed us out in his native language, saying: "What's wrong with a guy ordering something as a present?" Our response: "Ordering something as a present for yourself, with some guy's credit card number in New Hampshire?" Another Duh!

Here are some resources that will help: (if repparttar 109074 card number provided is International, you will be referred by these numbers:)

Visa and Mastercard Services: 800-347-5004 Discover Card Services: 800-347-2683 American Express: 800-528-2121

The US Justice Department would appreciate your reporting what you know about stolen credit card numbers to them: Their new website called Cybercrime was created to address repparttar 109075 growing incidents of crime on repparttar 109076 Internet. Visit them here: http://www.cybercrime.gov/

Internet Fraud Complaint Center

https://www.ifccfbi.gov/

This site is brought to you by repparttar 109077 FBI, principal investigative arm of repparttar 109078 U.S. Department of Justice, and repparttar 109079 National White Collar Crime Center. The Complaint Center's mission is to serve as government headquarters for combatting and reporting all types of Internet fraud. Consumers can easily and securely submit complaints. It works like tech support -- you get a ticket number, and then your complaint is referred to repparttar 109080 appropriate regulatory, investigative, or enforcement agency. The IFCC and associated agencies will collect, manage, analyze, and disseminate data, warnings, news, and statistics in order to educate repparttar 109081 public and catch repparttar 109082 perpetrators.

Protecting Your Online Store from the Internet Burglars, Part 3

Written by Lynne Schlumpf

Thanks for joining me for Part 3 of this article. Now let's look at some lessons we learned from our scenario of two Internet store owners.

Lessons to be learned:

That's what is great about this booklet. You don't have to lose to learn these lessons. If you read carefully and apply repparttar principles I am going to teach you, your online business will be a fortress against credit card theft. Thieves prey on new online stores or lazy merchants.

I hate to be a skeptic, but TRUST will put you out of business on repparttar 109060 Internet. Apathy will put you out, too.

Here are my steps to protecting yourself:

1. Do not use an automatic verification service for online shopping carts. There are many providers out there who say they will take care of your processing for you. All you do is send your customers to repparttar 109061 verification/credit card purchase page that repparttar 109062 provider gives. The money is then automatically deposited in your account. We created our own shopping cart. When we get an order, we're sent an email with a link to click on that takes us to a webpage printout of repparttar 109063 order. We then take that information, use repparttar 109064 software our merchant provider gave us and input it there for verification by modem. Your credit card verification should be either by software or by telephone verification. This gives you control of what transactions you allow to go through.

2. Take a good look at repparttar 109065 order. Does it look strange to you? Is repparttar 109066 amount a large amount? For example, is someone ordering 200 computer monitors from you? There's probably a 99% chance it's stolen. Is repparttar 109067 email address they provided from a free email service? Look at repparttar 109068 ship to and bill to addresses. Are they different? Is someone having something shipped overseas, but repparttar 109069 credit card billing information is in repparttar 109070 United States?

3. Call EVERYONE who orders from you. We get 4.9 cents a minute on our long distance, so for 25 cents to call repparttar 109071 customer and repparttar 109072 toll free number to repparttar 109073 bank that issued repparttar 109074 credit card, we verify EVERY order.

4. When calling repparttar 109075 customer, explain to them that you have seen a lot of credit card theft on your online store. Make it clear that you want to protect them. Ask them these 2 questions. They will tell you whether or not that person has that credit card in their hand:

A. Please provide me with repparttar 109076 tollfree number from repparttar 109077 back of your card. B. Please provide me with repparttar 109078 bank's name

This conversation with repparttar 109079 customer also gives you repparttar 109080 opportunity to check them out and give them repparttar 109081 comfort of knowing a human being took their order. (You would not believe how many of our online store customers have said they felt better that they got to talk to a real person!)

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