| LED Digest 1879: Chargebacks, Chargebacks, Chargebacks |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam,led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com ................................................ October 7, 2004 Issue #1879 ................................................ .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Anti-Virus Software? ==-- ~ James Miller "I use what would be considered a 'belt and braces' approach in the UK." ~ Mark Frank "You need to change your settings in Norton." ~ R.J. Peters "I have had *great* success using Panda Antivirus." --== Alternatives to Authorize.Net ==-- ~ Phil Weaver "I have a horror story..." ~ Sarah Hayes "The great thing with Nochex is they guarantee the merchant no chargebacks!" ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== New Search Engine - Clusty.com ==-- ~ Jim Berry --== CGI Forms and Scammers ==-- ~ Diane Dennis ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: James Miller Subject: Anti-virus > Does anyone know a good anti-virus program that > will just permanently delete the infected messages > and tell me it deleted viruses. - Stu Langley, LED 1878 I use what would be considered a "belt and braces" approach in the UK. I actually get a lot of spam, as years ago I had lots of e-mail addresses in my web site. All are now encoded with Java, but it doesn't stop people using old lists. Typically, I'll get about 3-400 unwanted messages a day. I use a standard virus processor like McAfee, which I find works well and quarantines the messages correctly. Or at least I haven't had a virus get through for some years. But in my case, I pre-filter everything with a free program called POPFILE. This uses a sophisticated Bayesian filter to categorise all of my messages. For instance this post is tagged as led_digest and this automatically gets put into the right folder in Outlook. POPFILE uses every word in the message to do the tagging and thus as these messages always come with the same dependable headers, led_digest scores very highly. But the main beauty of POPFILE is that nearly all spam and viruses get identified before going to McAfee. They get quarantined and then I arrange for them to go straight to the Deleted Items folder. A quick scan of this where I order everything by subject, followed by a bulk delete, and that is usually all I do with spam and viruses. As my business is data analysis of all sorts, I have analysed this approach in detail and find it only gives the occasional false negative and very few false positives. James Miller Daisy Analysis www.daisy.co.uk ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Mark Frank Subject: Anti-virus Stu, You need to change your settings in Norton. Select Options / Email / Repair Then Silently Delete If Unsuccessful. Norton will automatically delete infected emails without telling you about every one. Mark Frank, Author Start Your Own Home-Based Website Design Business http://www.websitedesignbiz.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: R.J. Peters Subject: Anti-virus Stu, Yeah, viruses put me in a bitchy mood, too. But I have had *great* success using Panda Antivirus. For a single user, get the Titanium version. Everything is totally automatic, if you want it to be. You can choose whether you want notifications, confirmations, etc. - or not. I have it set to notify, so a little window pops up, tells me it downloaded 77 or 128 or whatever new signatures, and there is nothing in the deleted or quarantine area, though I set it up to save a log now and then so I can check on its performance. I set it to just delete and go on its merry way most of the time. I still do a full scan every so often though I could set that to automatic also. I'm just a bit anal about it and like to watch the process to be sure. As a network admin who has had my share of cleaning viruses at work, I love the automaticity of Panda. I do not like Norton. Another good one is AVG, though I get better protection with Panda. Oh yeah, their website is www.pandasoftware.com. Great tech support, too, BTW. (Though I've heard of others who don't like Panda, my experience with them has been terrific.) Good luck, R.J. Peters ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Phil Weaver Subject: CC merchants > ... we have all known for over a year that these attacks > were planned and coming... The [US] senate, banking > commissions and law enforcement are aware of the > ongoing assaults allegedly by terrorists meant to break > the banking system by crippling small businesses. - Charles Bennett, LED 1877 I was amazed to see Mr. Bennet's post. I thought I was the only one in the world that thought that there was an ongoing attack on merchants meant to damage business through Chargebacks. I have a horror story as my business was hit hard with them. I'll keep it brief because my file on the subject fills a desk drawer. I run a website selling a very unique item. We had been doing pretty well selling the item without a merchant account so we decided to set one up. This was Feb of 2002. We set up a merchant account through Wells Fargo. The rep came out and had my wife sign the agreement and that was it. No set up, no white papers, nothing. So thinking everything was fine we let it start processing orders and thought wow how convenient. In May we were in the process of relocating our business. Due to some unforseen problems with getting new phone lines in our internet connection was down during the move. When we got it back up we realized we had been flooded with fraudulent orders. Now our typicall order is anywhere from US$70 to $170. The orders coming in were $10k and up. Anyone wanting to order that much of our product would definetely call us for a discount. They were obviously fraudulent. We immediatly called Wells Fargo Merchant Services and talked to the security division. Security told us there was no way to stop them. They said it was totally random and we were being targeted with what was called Master Charge Fraud. They were running a program on our site which would generate CC numbers and try them. We were seeing 2-3 large orders come through a day and at the time had no idea how to stop them. Wells Fargo didn't either. Finally figured out that cvv2 would stop most of them but I needed a shopping cart upgrade to do it. Set about getting the upgrade installed which took a couple weeks. Finally got them shut down. Then the barrage of calls from people who thought we were trying to steal from them. Their credit cards had been used and most of them were people that didn't even shop on the web. My wife spent every day on the phone dealing with them. Then hours on hours of dealing with the chargeback paperwork. They claimed that if we filled out the appropriate paperwork prior to it becoming a chargeback then it would not go on record as a chargeback. WRONG. It was a terrible mess (still is). Wells fargo then informed us that they were closing our merchant accounts and setting up a reserve account. This meant they were going to hold onto the money as long as they saw fit. That has turned out to be indefinetely. A year later we get a message on our answering machine from Wells Fargo that goes something like "As you know you owe us $2500 dollars, we expect payment immediatly." Where did this come from? I don't know. I tried to call them back and left many messages. I couldn't get them to return a call. No accounting of why we owed them anything. Couple of months go by and a collection agency calls with a figure close to the previous amount but a few hundred dollars off. I call them and say that I have no idea what the charges are for. They say they'll drop it until Well's Fargo provides documentation (which they never did) Few months go by and Well's Fargo responds to my letter to the BBB. They send a generic response and don't even get my name or any of the details right. The letter states they have some solutions to finding a new merchant account for us. When I call them they instruct me as to how to go about getting an account under a different name. The rep states tht they are not going to pursue the $2500 we "owe" them but they can't get us off the TMF. Now we get a letter from an attorney stating they are going after our assets over another amount again close to the $2500 figure but different. We fax a letter to the attorney stating there has been no accounting of this figure. Have yet to have a response. There's more to this story but probaly not the room for it here. One of these days I'll put up a corporate hte site which will probably get me in more trouble. I think there are many in my situation but they just hit dead ends like I did. If the numbers that I've heard it's putting a huge dent in e-commerce. I definetely think there is an attack on business going on. This is just the first time I've ever heard anyone else say it. If anyone can point to info on this sort of thing, please do Phil Weaver (I'll leave my site out of it too) ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Sarah Hayes Subject: CC merchants I live in the UK and in addition to my merchant account (Cardnet and securehosting.com) I use Nochex (www.nochex.co.uk). It is similar to PayPal, but for UK debit and credit cards only. The great thing with Nochex is they guarantee the merchant NO CHARGEBACKS! I do my best to prevent charge backs, checks are set to the highest level and all order are dispatched via recorded (signed for) delivery etc, but with Nochex don't have to worry as they take the risk. The cost per transaction is the same as my merchant account, but there are no set-up fees or monthly charge and the money takes 4 days to clear in to my bank account. Sarah Hayes ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Jim Berry Subject: Clusty.com - new search engine Adam, A good suggestion for a new discussion topic might be www.clusty.com, which you can read about at http://snipurl.com/9leo [home.businesswire.com]. Best regards, Jim Berry www.bookkeepinghelp.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Diane Dennis Subject: mailto_cgi and scammers Hi All! You folks are great and I thank you for the help I've received in the past. :) I have a new question... I have a few forms set up at my site for folks to send me quick notes, ask me questions, etc. These are set up so that the user submits his inquiry to me via my mailto_cgi bin rather than through his own email program. Today I received one of those mailto_cgi bin emails but it was one of those Nigerian scams rather than a visitor looking to communicate something about my site. Did this scammer actually go to my site and fill in my form manually or have scammers figured out how to utilize mailto_cgi bins? Thank you again everyone for all of your help! Have a terrific day, Diane Dennis http://www.thecontractorsgroup.com diane, thecontractorsgroup.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2004 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud." - Sophocles |
