Protecting your self against online credit card fraud

Today more and more people are looking to the internet to do their shopping. With online stores popping up all over the internet the urge to spend money on the World Wide Web has never been stronger. The unfortunate thing is that the urge for scam artists to take your money has never been stronger. So how do you protect your self from these thieves? If you follow these simple steps I promise you’ll enjoy shopping on the internet more having taken these precautions.

The first thing you should consider when buying online is if the website you are shopping on is secure? These days most retail websites have secure pages where you enter your personal information but that doesn’t mean that all sites are secure. The first step in making sure that your information is secure is to check the address bar and look for “https” this means that you are on a secure page. If the address begins with “http” the page is not secure and your information should not be given. The second step in determining if the website is safe is to look for the picture of a closed lock or an unbroken key. These pictures can be found in the bottom right corner of your browser window. When the lock is open or the key is broken the page is not secure. The last thing to look for is mention of secure certificates or “SSL”. These logos usually appear near the bottom of the screen. If you are still not sure if the website is secure you can always ask them through e-mail (make sure to save the reply just in case).

Credit card fraud is still relatively common. Even with all the security that some of the larger websites have, these con artists are still able to scam some people. So what do you do if you suspect that you have been scammed? The first thing you should do is determine if the charges on your credit card are really unauthorized. This is why you should save all of your receipts. Sometimes when a company makes a charge to your card it might show up on your statement as a charge from a name that you don’t recognize so it is important to check your receipts and confirmation e-mails (the company will usually tell you what the purchase will be charged as in the confirmation) to make sure that the mystery charges aren’t legitimate. Once you are sure that you have been scammed either by the store or by someone that has somehow stolen your credit card information your next step is to contact the credit card company. Some companies such as VISA and MasterCard offer zero liability for fraudulent charges. If your credit card issuer does not have a zero liability policy then you are only liable for up to $50 according to federal law.

Shopping on the internet is more popular than ever and with the flood of internet shoppers comes a wave of con artists. Protect your self from these crooks. Follow the information I have laid out for you and remember to save your receipts, look for secure pages and if that isn’t enough then only buy from well established websites that you have had good experiences with.

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Phishing And Fraud – What Is It?

Phishing is a very sneaky type of fraud conducted over the Internet. Its name is a throw back to the early days of hacking and identity theft and the practice of phone phreaking. While there can be very complicated schemes devised, they are all based on a very simple concept.

Phishers try to persuade you, or trick you into giving them sensitive information which they can then use to make money out of the system. For example, one very attractive target for phishers would be your paypal account. Paypal is an online payment system that allows you to put money in your account with your credit or debit card, and then basically email the money to other people’s paypal accounts. It is very simple, cheap and fast and very popular for online shoppers as they do not have to give their credit card details away over the internet.

If you wanted to take money out of other people’s paypal accounts, all you would really need is their email address and password. Then you sign in to their account, and send the money to an account you have set up.

What phishers will do is email paypal customers with an email that looks like an official email from paypal. It will have the paypal logo and format and will look exactly like official paypal emails to customers. It may even come from an address that looks like paypal’s official website. It will go on to say it is a random security check or some other technical procedure and that you are required to type in your user name and password. It will then thank you and say the check or whatever other scheme it claims to be is complete. In the meantime, the phisher will have your password and can clear out your account.

While this is a basic example, there are countless variations of increasing complexity that will be used to try and entice customers to give out bank account details, credit card details or other sensitive information. It can often be next to impossible for the average customer to detect that the email or website is not the official one of the company it is supposed to be from and they are therefore very dangerous.

If you do suspect that an email you receive is a phishing attempt then notify the appropriate company immediately. The other thing to remember is that most banks, credit card companies and other institutions now inform their customers that they will never ask their customers for their passwords in an email, nor will any of their employees ever ask for a password and therefore never give it to anyone who asks you for it.

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What You Have Been Dying To Know About Fraud

Since the inception of the information technology and the technological advancement of the marketing industry, many people are engaging into fraudulent activities. This is because they are able to gain financial gains and advantages to people through easier and faster means.

For this reason, authorities had been trying to suppress the growing trend of various frauds that are currently affecting thousands, if not millions of people.

Basically, fraud is a kind of trickery that is used for the individual’s benefits, mostly on the financial aspect. These kinds of frauds are absolutely punishable by law, though, its implementation and intensity may vary from one place to another.

In Criminal Law

In the context of criminal law, a fraud is absolutely punishable under certain circumstances that will constitute the deception of a certain individual from which personal gain of the fraudulent person is achieved.

Some of the common frauds that are abhorred by the law are:

1. False advertising

This refers to the achievement of some personal gains of the person concerned by give the wrong impression about a particular service, product, or a business. This can be executed by providing deceptive information projected in unreliable forms of advertisements.

2. Identity theft

In the credit card industry, identity theft is the common type of fraud. This is when the identity of the credit card user is stolen for the personal benefit of the person who wants to gain some financial access to the user’s finances.

There are instances that the criminal may use the identity of the credit card user to make some purchases, in which, the victim’s credit card is used. In turn, the victim will receive billing statements containing such purchases that he or she did not personally created.

There are also some cases wherein the identity of the victim is used to create some crimes, in which, after establishing such acts, they contact the person and blackmail him by asking some money in exchange of eliminating any criminal acts that were constituted through his name.

3. Forgery

This is also one type of frauds where the documents are obtained and processed with the purpose of using them to deceive other people or institution.

In this process, the person who ant to deceive other people will obtain documents that are fake, reproduced, replicas, or explicit reproductions of the original material. There are also some documents that may be originally done but the signatures that should have signified the authenticity of the document is forged.

The very concept of this kind of fraud is to modify an object to suit the personal gains of the offender.

4. False billing

This refers to the fraudulent undertaking of charging or creating billing statements to a particular person or an institution. Here, the criminals will extract money from these people, in which, the concerned person will think that it is part of his or her subscription on a certain company.

In this way, people may be deceived that they have been issued some renewal of their subscriptions, for example, but in reality, the true owner of such establishment that issues subscriptions are not aware of it.

5. Insurance claims

These refers to the act of deceiving the insurance provider under the guise of claiming the due claims and benefits.

For instance, there are some people who create “fake deaths” in order to claim the insurance benefits provided by the individual’s insurance provider.

These are just some of the many examples of frauds. All of which are punishable under the law.

Hence, if you think that you have been victimized based on the examples given, it is best to take some actions properly, otherwise, you will be left hanging on the brink of disaster.

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