How do you handle fraud as a host?

[hostmything]

Hello HD!
So as my thread title imply, I want to know how you handle fraudulent orders. I have received over $10,000 in fraudulent orders in the last week, and have responded by simply marking the orders as fraud.

To prevent fraud, I have Stripe.com (my CC processor) verify the zip code and CVC code of all clients paying by CC, but this does not help me if some CC ripper is the one purchasing the services. .

So far as a host, I have never had to deal with this scale of fraudulent orders :/. I get almost 5 a day now, and they take away my attention from my actual clients. 90% of them are for high end dedicated servers.

 

[ughosting]

If you are providing "non trivial" orders, you should always phone them first before making anything active.

Also MaxMind Fraud (very cheap) does a great job of making sure their tel number, IP addresses and recorded address are in the same location or thereabouts. And checks whether they are using a VPN or proxy to connect to your services.

 

[HostLeet]

Hello HD!
So as my thread title imply, I want to know how you handle fraudulent orders. I have received over $10,000 in fraudulent orders in the last week, and have responded by simply marking the orders as fraud.

To prevent fraud, I have Stripe.com (my CC processor) verify the zip code and CVC code of all clients paying by CC, but this does not help me if some CC ripper is the one purchasing the services. .

So far as a host, I have never had to deal with this scale of fraudulent orders :/. I get almost 5 a day now, and they take away my attention from my actual clients. 90% of them are for high end dedicated servers.

Hi Scott,

Unfortunately this is a never-ending battle that all of us vendors have to deal with on a daily basis, and constantly improve upon. Specially in the hosting business.

As ughosting mentioned, take a look a MaxMind, it works wonders for a hosting provider. But, don't think for one second that having MaxMind enabled will be the end of fraud for good and you can forget about it.. Once MaxMind is properly setup to fit your business needs (and only you can do this!), you still need to manually review each and every order that comes through.

I recommend you enable phone verification as well, specifically for high-end orders such as Dedicated Servers, VPS, SSL, ect.. This will "weed-out" a lot of the bad apples, but not all of them. Just remember; when in doubt, always contact the client ASAP. Sometimes you or your system will mark a legitimate order as fraud, so make sure you have this stated in your TOS or knowledgebase. Then, place the link to the article on your order page so everyone can see it. You may also want to place a warning for all fraudsters on your checkout page as well.

I've attached a screenshot of our warning box for your reference. :thumbup:

 

[hostmything]

May I ask what you do with the funds that the scammer used? I'm almost 100% sure these scammers are using ripped cards. Do I just refund the money? Or hang onto it until its disputed? That is probably my main concern. I do not want to be in a legal pickle because some fraudulent client purchased my services with "John Smith's" CC.

Thanks for all your recommendations. I will be sure to implement something in addition to human eye verification.

 

[Computerholic]

There are many things you can do. What we do is simple. If they pay using a credit or debit card and we have confirmed it as fraud, we refund the money back to the card holder. If it's paypal, we wait till paypal contacts us then we send the money back no issues.

 

[easyhostmedia]

We use Maxmind along with the telephone verification service, it an order is marked as fraud then they invoice for the order is marked cancelled and the order marked fraud, We then will check the order report info provided by maxmind and if we agree with Maxmind then we just l;eave it and await the client to contact us to why the order was marked fraud. If it is a genuine order then the client will contact you asking why the system says its fraud, when a fraudster would never contact you.

 

[itsmir]

We use maxmind (with phone verification) and also manually review any flagged orders. If in doubt we request a copy of some form of photo id (passport, driving license etc). All orders for dedi's are manually reviewed due to deployment costs.

Maxmind is a pretty good 'first line of defense' but manually checking orders is what keeps the fraud levels down.

 

[DTN_VPS]

If you are providing "non trivial" orders, you should always phone them first before making anything active.

Also MaxMind Fraud (very cheap) does a great job of making sure their tel number, IP addresses and recorded address are in the same location or thereabouts. And checks whether they are using a VPN or proxy to connect to your services.

Yup second this one, they are reccomended from alot of people... and me

 

[Shine Servers]

MaxMind is enough for us, we have telephone verification setup as no fraudster gives his real number

Maxmind > 2CO > Order Setup (This is how we are secured)

From last 8 or 9 months we hit only 14 Fraud orders.

 

[Alex - A2 Hosting]

MaxMind is enough for us, we have telephone verification setup as no fraudster gives his real number

Maxmind > 2CO > Order Setup (This is how we are secured)

From last 8 or 9 months we hit only 14 Fraud orders.

14 out of how many orders? That could be a high or low count based on the total number of orders during that period .

You sort of conflict your statements: no fraudster gives his real number & in 8 - 9 months you've had 14 fraud orders (which can be a lot )

Though you sound satisfied so good to see your setup working

 

[HostLeet]

May I ask what you do with the funds that the scammer used? I'm almost 100% sure these scammers are using ripped cards. Do I just refund the money? Or hang onto it until its disputed?

Always refund the money, never wait for a chargeback!

If you know it's fraud then simply return the money asap, ban the IP and move on. :thumbup:

 

[easyhostmedia]

Yes if you suspect fraud, refund the money straight away, if the order was genuine, then the client will contact you asking why you refunded while a fraudster wont contact you as they will just move onto someone else.

 

[hostmything]

I have refunded the money. Thanks for all the information
Don't the credit card companies usually pick up the tab for stolen credit cards? I let one of the more realistic looking fraudulent orders slip through to provisioning, so now I have already paid the data center for that server.
For the future: If something like that happens, can I wait for the charge back to occur, and dispute it saying I provided this "person" with e.g a server? Im almost 75% sure the credit card company picks up the tab at that point. Can anyone relate?

 

[easyhostmedia]

I have refunded the money. Thanks for all the information
Don't the credit card companies usually pick up the tab for stolen credit cards? I let one of the more realistic looking fraudulent orders slip through to provisioning, so now I have already paid the data center for that server.
For the future: If something like that happens, can I wait for the charge back to occur, and dispute it saying I provided this "person" with e.g a server? Im almost 75% sure the credit card company picks up the tab at that point. Can anyone relate?

If you think this then you wont be in business long. If you keep waiting until you get chargebacks thinking tough the CC will pick up the tab, then 1 think will happen.

Your bank along with CC providers (visa/mastercard) will all of a sudden decide your business is too high risk and refuse to do business with you, so you will be without any bank account ( as word will get out to other banks) and CC/DC providers will refuse to allow you to accept any of their cards, which would also mean Paypal/2checkout etc. will not be able to allow you to use their services.

So how long will you last without any bank account or any way to accept online payments.

 

[BlastPort]

We use MaxMind via WHMCS, and they give you 1000 free orders (which is awesome!). You can also just use 2checkout as your only payment gateway, as they do fraud checking on each order, and PayPal is an option with it.

However, even with MaxMind, we have had a few orders go through that need disputes auto-opened, due to potential fraud. Seems no method is fail safe when it comes to fraud.

 

[traxt]

Try to prevent fraud first!
In your case, check ID, address, IP and call the customer.
If all fails, then cancel order and refund

 

[Alex - A2 Hosting]

Try to prevent fraud first!
In your case, check ID, address, IP and call the customer.
If all fails, then cancel order and refund

We use MaxMind and provide this to our reseller for free.

We reject orders & use the telephone verification based on 2 different numbers, works rather nicely for us.

 

[nigelb]

We monitor new orders and catch most, the issue is the ones that get through and have ordered a domain. You can cancel hosting but the domain.....

 

[Rado_Ch]

We monitor new orders and catch most, the issue is the ones that get through and have ordered a domain. You can cancel hosting but the domain.....

Domains can also be canceled, some providers do give you a grace period of 24-48 hours after registration. If you, as a host, have a good verification process and act swiftly, it shouldn`t be an issue to locate and remove such a fraudster, refunding the money to the real owner. Failing to do so in time will leave you with the domain, but still its a small loss, compared to what you can lose with chargebacks and bad online reputation.

I can also suggest you to track carefully each order where order details are different from billing details - yes, most of the times people work with developers or friends, who buy the accounts for them, but a quick phone call can easily clear the case and most people are cooperative when it comes to their own online security...with the exception of the frauds themselves :smash:

 

[HostUG]

That's a big number. You might be in their list now. We do not currently process credit card payments, just because of these frauds. But in near future we will be adding it.