5 Signs Your Store Is Suffering from Card Testing Fraud

In the last few months, we have seen a noticeable increase in unsophisticated form of credit card testing, especially with our Yahoo Store merchants. “Card testing" happens when fraudsters use online stores as testing grounds for the credit card information they have.  Usually, they don’t care about the actual goods or services being purchased during the transaction.  Their only goal is to “test” the cards to make sure they have not been blocked/canceled and the credit limits have not been reached.

For example, we came across different variations of the following:

Name:   weratawreta fsgsdfg
Address:  dfgsdfgs
              Miami, FL 33166
Email:   dfdsfsdf@yahoo.com

Name:      rtretertr trtrtrt
Address:  456 4ffdefs
               544
               los angeles, ca 90021
Email:    hgfdfgff@gmail.com

These two cases are SO obviously fraudulent because of the gibberish information they contain, they are easy to spot. However, sometimes card testing can be a little more sophisticated and not so out rightly fake.  Here are 5 other things that should help you determine whether you are under a card testing attack! 

5 Fraud Prevention Tips for the Holiday Season

The holiday season is well underway. Better late than never, just wanted to remind everyone of the simple things that can be done that can go a long way. None of these require any new tools except a little of common sense.

Here are some tips that are quick and easy to adopt to help you deal with holiday fraud headaches.

1. Address matching: although this might be hard during the holiday season, especially when lots of grandmas are shipping to little Johnnys everywhere, this still can be used as the basic filtering criteria to automatically flag transaction for manual review.
2. Watch out for overnight shipping: it is perfectly understandable to pay extra overnight or express shipping when it's 2 days before Christmas.  However, if a customer is paying a lot extra when there is plenty of time to spare, then that raises a red flag.
3. Provide GREAT customer service: a lot of times chargebacks can be avoided if customers can easily return or exchange an item.  So make a point to make it easy for customers to reach you and reverse the charges through YOU and not their bank.  This means having lenient policies, providing clear instructions that encourage customers to contact you, sending confirmation emails after order and processing requests promptly, etc.
4. Collect signature or delivery confirmation: whenever possible and definitely when it involves a high price ticket item.
5. Automate basic screening: (see #1) so that you have time to do manual review of orders that require more attention.

Hope these tips put you in a holiday fraud fighting mood!!