Credit Card fraud

[Pho]

I had a phone call from NatWest at around 9:10 saying there had been an attempted transaction on my account for ~£210 at 8:45 and it had been flagged as possibly fraudulent (it was from some random country). I mentioned how I hardly used the card and they said it was likely down to them randomly generating the numbers. Does anyone know much about this? I mean, surely they would need my name (which isn't common), CV2 numbers etc to put it though?

I know I could have just asked NatWest but I forgot at the time, I was more concerned they had voided it.

So much for paying my car insurance tonight .

 

[Redrum]

Your name is totally irrelevant. All that is actually needed to put an online transaction through is a correct card number and expiry date (and in the case of Maestro/formally switch, the issue number). The CVV2 (the 3 digits on the back) is passed to the bank during the transaction, but if its incorrect the bank still issue an authorisation on the card. The CVV2 is more an advisory to the merchant to decide if they accept the order.

I have seen settings on some payment gateways to reject an order on a failed CVV2, but I don't think it actually rejects it at the bank, but rather just discards the sucessful transaction.

The same goes for the AVS1 and AVS2 (first line of address and post code). These details are passed to the bank for a security checks but if they are incorrect, the transaction still goes through but the merchant is notified that the address checks failed.

None of it is perfect and loads of fraud still goes on, much of it where the card number has not been randomly generated but actually stolen from somewhere, and therefore stolen with some of the other information associated with the card.

Thats why the banks are trying to improve things with 3D secure, and why it helps to have a decent bank that pro-actively monitors things like yours does.

 

[Pho]

Thanks for the explanation . I'm surprised it can still get put through if some of the details are wrong - I thought that's what they were there for and and wasn't an optional thing.

Never mind, at least they stopped it.

 

[gumbald]

Didn't you ask what you'd been supposedly buying?

 

[Redrum]

Well it would be very difficult to block it on something like a name or an address because there are usually lots of different ways to type it. They do have a method of addressing this problem but its not perfect which I think is why they take the attitude of allowing it through and letting the merchant decide if its fraudulent or not because at the end of the day, if the merchant honours the order and it is fraudulent they are the ones that will loose out when a charge back is done, so it's in their interest to do the legwork of security checks.

 

[Pho]

Didn't you ask what you'd been supposedly buying?

I did, but I completely forgot as it wasn't a product as such more like a service. I'll probably ring them back and find out when I get the new card anyway.

Well it would be very difficult to block it on something like a name or an address because there are usually lots of different ways to type it. They do have a method of addressing this problem but its not perfect which I think is why they take the attitude of allowing it through and letting the merchant decide if its fraudulent or not because at the end of the day, if the merchant honours the order and it is fraudulent they are the ones that will loose out when a charge back is done, so it's in their interest to do the legwork of security checks.

I see what you're saying and it makes sense. I always thought if I didn't enter in my exact details (or at least something similar) it would have been flagged as incorrect and wouldn't get processed. By the sounds of it, it's not that hard to commit this kind of fraud then.

 

[Redrum]

By the sounds of it, it's not that hard to commit this kind of fraud then.

I would say thats a fair statement. The situation is also not helped by the fact that the police will do absolutely nothing about it, even if the merchant does all the work for them and presents them with all the evidence they need so they literally just have to go and nick someone. This means aside from being fairly easy to pull of, there are no consequences to being caught which makes it even more appealing for the crooks.

 

[Pho]

I always knew the police weren't the most helpful in these kind of situations but that sounds really bad. No wonder banks are doing more to try and combat it.