Friday, December 31, 2004

Credit card fraud: more on my most recent experience

Faughnan's Notes: CC Fraud Take II

A few more thoughts on this recent $7K fraud experience.

1. How did the crooks manage delivery of the stolen goods? In the Netfill scam there were no good to deliver and the faked transactions were for virtual goods.

2. Why didn't AMEX's fraud alarms go off? I have to assume they disable them, or tune them down, around the holidays. I've had AMEX question my purchase of underwear while traveling on business, but I didn't get a call about 6 separate $550 transactions in one day against one company.

3. Why NEWEGG? Why not spread the transactions around and make the fraud less obvious? Was NEWEGG an easy target for some reason?

4. Was the attack fully automated? That's the most interesting possibiliity. It seemed pretty stylized -- two near identical attacks two weeks apart, each beginning with a domain name change. Problem is, unlike Netfill, this seems to have involved delivery of physical goods. Hard to see how that could scale. I don't think this was an automated attack.

The more I think about the delivery of physical goods problem, the more I'm inclined to think this was a kid somewhere.

Update: This must be the season for credit card fraud -- I might have another one! My son's Brett Favre figure broke; I had trouble finding a replacement on the net and ended up placing an order with toyglobe.com. My AMEX card was charged the day I placed the order: 12/3/04; it was charged slightly more than expected. Nothing has come from Toyglobe.com (office is in my old home town: St. Laurent, Quebec). Their web site doesn't have a phone number. A web search finds a worrisome web page of complaints. Hmmm. Suspicious timing?

Le, Guong
Toyglobe.com
3080 Barclay # 6
Montreal, Quebec h3s1j8
or
Toyglobe.com
5455 Vanden Abeele St.
St. Laurent, QC H4S 1S1

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

01/12/06

About TOYGLOBE

I have placed the Order Number 108192 through TOYGLOBE Webpage in 09/21/05 and I am waiting for it since I was told it had left its store in 10/28/05.

I send them constantly emails, but they do not answer me. TOYGLOBE has cheated me!


José J. Nuzzolese

JGF said...

I ended up getting the money back from TOYGLOBE. I think I submitted a claim with AMEX and then TOYGLOBE reversed the charge.

I prefer to use AMEX for all of my online work. I believe they have much better fraud and abuse prevention and management solutions than VISA/MasterCard.