Online Dating and Social Networking Industry Forums

ActiveDating · Guest

Our dating site is getting a lot of fraudulent transactions on credit card payments. Can anyone explain why and what it is in it for crooks? We don't sell pants or CD's. Our product is totally intangible. $25 charge backs are killers.
Ideas pls and how to fight it!!!

yorktown · Guest

One way is to block the west coast of Africa. I'm willing to bet more that 80% of your credit card scams are coming from Nigeria, Ghana and Chad.

Go to http://www.IP-TO-COUNTRY.com download the IP NUMBER directory they have. Open it in Excel. There is a way to mathematically change the IP Number to IP Addresses.

(I have posted how to do it on their site: http://ip-to-country.webhosting.info/node/view/149 )

Then get the range and block it in your server in the httpd.conf file.

Each country you want blocked will be blocked. Your credit card scams will significantlly drop.

Marc

ActiveDating · Guest

Hi Marc,

Thank you for your input. That's exactly what we do. Nonetheless, the question was: why do they do it? what for?

Best regards

yorktown · Guest

My understanding is they use an insecure site to test the transaction. If it goes through then they max it out with travel, telecommunications, merchandise, etc.

The consumer doesn't know about it until he/she gets the bill.

So your payment processor places the responsibility upon you to stop consecutive fraudulent transactions on your site. Otherwise, you get cut off.

Track the IP address of your customers. Its the only way.

By the way, if you are blocking just Nigeria, it is not enough. You need to block a slew of African countries. They've started now in Tanzania. That's a shame, because Mt. Kilaminjaro and the Sergengeti is there. These idiots will screw the entire nation from accessing many important websites.

ActiveDating · Guest

Thanx Marc,
That's about what I had on my mind.
But I doubt that these crooks are in Africa physically. Don’t you think so? Then what allows them to mask their IP's with IP’s from these countries?
I also noticed that many of them use @yahoo.fr free e-mails. Why France? What's so special about it?
When they do payments on our site, they always buy the most expensive services. So if they just try a card number, they would preserve $$$ for something tangible, I suppose.
Given to the fact that the credit companies benefit from the charge back, I have a strange filling that they may be involved somehow.
Obviously, they don't do any investigation on cases of fraud and taking into consideration massive fraud cases, it would provide them a nice extra risk-free revenue stream.

yorktown · Guest

1) Masking IP's: Yes its done, but not as much as people think. Most credit card fraud can be minimized by blocking 3rd world countries that will never do business with you and have high a online credit card fraud history (Nigeria, Ghana, etc). I actually had a telephone call earlier last week from a credit card scammer in Ghana, posing to be a conference delegate. It turns out I wasn't properly blocking their IP addresses. I am now Smile

I think you can also subvert this by making the transaction as an https:// transaction as opposed to an http:// transaction. Also, include cookies and a $HTTP_SERVER_VARS['REMOTE_ADDR'] or something like it so you can track the IP.

2) Yahoo.fr: Ahem, In west Africa.....they speak French. There were french colonies in Africa way back when. That's why the yahoo.fr is used. Its easier for some people there to use instead of English.

3) Charge backs cost money for everybody, the Merchant, the Merchant Bank, the Issuing Bank and the Payment processors. It also devalues credit cards as a form of currency if chargebacks are too high. I've learned from the http://www.ASROC.com conferences that the credit card companies do VERY well without chargebacks. So its not like they need more money. Visa and MC don't allow online casino transactions. That's a $7 Billion business in 2004. Trust me, its not money that they need regarding chargebacks
.

ActiveDating · Guest

Hi Marc,

I mentioned your httpd.conf file blocking IP's range idea to our web team. They are scratching their heads. Could you pls provide a piece of the httpd.conf file to indicate the way you do it?
Thanx in advance
Drink is on me once we meet in Miami conference.

yorktown · Guest

Here are some examples:

<Directory />
Order Deny,Allow
Deny from 123.456.789.0
Deny from 123.456.789.0/24
Deny from 123.456.789.0/123.456.789.255
Deny from 123.456.789.0/123.456.254.255
Allow form All
</Directory>

There's alot more about it if you do a good search on ' "Deny from" IP Syntax'

ActiveDating · Guest

I gotcha. Thank you!
But then you need to translate IP number range from IP-to-Country DB to IP address range, don't you? Or could you block it by IP number?

yorktown · Guest

That's why I said review this post:

( http://ip-to-country.webhosting.info/node/view/149 )

It will tell you how to convert IP Country to IP Address.

ActiveDating · Guest

Well, it seems like we are looking at more then just a drink on me.
Thank you very much, Marc, for your patience.

absix · Joined: 19 Jan 2005 Posts: 10 Location: d8board.com

90% of my fraudulent orders are with Cote'D Ivoire origin. I'd love to ban the whole country as well as Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and a few others.

Darn.

Chris · Guest

Hi, am new to here

yorktown · Guest

Chris,

This is for dating sites. Granted, if I was in Iraq as American, I would want to see a picture of a beautiful woman. I would frequent sites, like http://www.uselessjunk.com and not a dating site.

Plus, I'ld probably be be too busy ducking bullets.

So for a dating site to block Iraq to fight fraudulent transactions, that would certainly not affect the bottom line.

A message to all of those In Iraq: My heart and my hopes, Stay safe and come home alive on 2005.

Marc Lesnick
Conference Organizer
Online Dating Conference
http://www.iDate2005.com

yorktown · Guest

Off topic: Since you brought up Iraq, this video is from an F-16 which takes out a crowd of people (claimed to be insurgents) on the streets in Iraq.

It's not a pretty thing to watch, but I prefer to see reality compared to the filtered news we get on ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN.

http://www.uselessjunk.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=863