This weeks Blog post will also focus on SMB who have shops on Shopify, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon or other sites.
Only recently did this fraud come to our attention and only when we had a strange weekend of high orders come in for our new perfumes that were just added.
Too many orders over the course of 2 days AND all flagged by Shopify (Thank you!!) as highly possible fraudelent charges ! What do we do and how do we review and handle these orders? *if you want to know specific reasons of why these orders were flagged, Direct message me and i will let you know all the reasons. i do not want to post too much here to enable the fraudsters to have more work-arounds to being flagged!
Note -- EVERY order was paid for via Credit Card so essentially you have the funds sitting in your account in this scenario.
Below is the list of what i would highly recommend doing to insure you weed out Fraud orders AND you don't lose money shipping these kinds of orders.
1. look at the shipping address carefully. you will have a street address on one line but if the 2nd line has a weird setup (like "SR-1453") , that is a virtual address/drop box now being used by fraudsters to avoid detection on their true identity. if you see this DELETE/REFUND the order immediately. No valid customers ships to virtual addresses unless you are trying to keep your identity hidden.
2. google the address -- if you find these are a courier or freight forwarders, again, this is a dead giveaway you are shipping to a Virtual Address
3. email being used is yopmail, be highly suspicious. Yopmail is again touted as an anonymous/disposable email system that "keeps you from being traced". Again, not one valid customer we know uses this type of email as they are already using their payment information and billing addresses to procure the sale -- why hide behind a fake email now?
Why are we writing a blog about E-commerce fraud on our site ? Because we care for all of you and do not want even our competitors to fall victim to this new fraud. Any order shipped will eventually be disputed when the true CC owner finds out and you will end up losing this charge -- hence, you shipped your merchandise to these fraudsters for free!!
Be diligant and smart but first line of defense is making sure you have Fraud prevention software installed. Your credit charge system should make it hard for this to occur AND should flag orders that fall outside of normal orders.
Again, Direct Message me with any questions and we continue to wish all SMB's well and prosperous 2021 !