All Hosts Beware

[Dan]

Today we received a payment of 267.98 USD from an individual in California for a yearly subscription to one of our Resellers, including domain registration. The transaction was made with Credit Card to us via PayPal.
When we received the notification email from PayPal, and compared the buyer's details to those submitted to our Billing system, we became very suspicious as both were completely different.

I first tried to call the number submitted in the billing system but got an answering machine. I then looked up the individual in the PayPal notification and found his number, which was also different. So, I called the number and spoke to the "buyer's" wife who informed me that they did not know of anyone by the name of ...... and had made no authorisation for anyone other than themselves to use their credit card.

Here are the details of the Fake person. (I will not provide the details of the victims):

Moises Castro
thaiminh88@gmail.com
135 E. 94th Street #3,
Los Angeles , CA, 90003
United States
3239723326

Their IP: 219.153.4.98 - Which resolves to Beijing

The domain they ordered: thaiminh.ws

After speeking with the lady, who was very nice I might add, we immediately refunded payment via PayPal and cancelled the Reseller.

Please watch out for these people.

Thanks,
Dan.

[.Joe.]

That's pretty scary for the victims. Knowing that their CreditCard is being used by someone else through the internet. Hopefully they temporarily cancel the credit card.

And, there's so much stupid people out there...using someone elses credit card...when their half away across the world when the respective owners of the credit card are located in LA.

Hopefully the right thing happens in this situation.

[Dan]

That's pretty scary for the victims. Knowing that their CreditCard is being used by someone else through the internet. Hopefully they temporarily cancel the credit card.

And, there's so much stupid people out there...using someone elses credit card...when their half away across the world when the respective owners of the credit card are located in LA.

Hopefully the right thing happens in this situation.

Yep.
We have contacted their ISP, lot of good that will do I know. We are also trying to make contact with the Police in LosAngeles, as the offender gave an address and phone number there, so it may help to track them down.

Then we have people from Aisia wondering why we don't accept registrations from them. Work it out people.

[AvailNetworks]

Did you also reverse the domain they registered as well?

If I see an order with an ip originating from anything not in the US/Australia/Europe I generally cancel it right away without question. WE only market to those areas, anything outside of it has ALWAYS been fraud

[Carlos12]

Yep.
We have contacted their ISP, lot of good that will do I know. We are also trying to make contact with the Police in LosAngeles, as the offender gave an address and phone number there, so it may help to track them down.

Then we have people from Aisia wondering why we don't accept registrations from them. Work it out people.

Good move you called the Police so people like that stop doing all these stuff

[Dan]

We didn't register the domain.

[Jun Luzon]

Wise decision, thanks for the info. It will help.

[.Joe.]

Did you also reverse the domain they registered as well?

If I see an order with an ip originating from anything not in the US/Australia/Europe I generally cancel it right away without question. WE only market to those areas, anything outside of it has ALWAYS been fraud

Really, I've been quite alot of traffic from China and Taiwan recently. And some from the middle eastern. Should I be scared then? Just incase they buy hosting? Just so I know it ain't fraud?

[GamePhreak]

I don't think it's a good idea to cancel orders just because it doesn't come from the United States and its democratic buddies. I have customers from there that are legitimate. If you're afraid of fraud, then you should do something rational, other than discriminating based on nationality.

[.Joe.]

Well it isn't based on nationality. It's based on the majority of people located in that area that are performing fraud payment transactions.

I don't want to come across racist or prejudice of any kind.

[ITahmed]

What I usually do after the credit card approval I contact the customer if possible or report it to whatever lead I can get.... let the scammer upload the data and configure it, then I suspend the account, just in case it wears them off. I have not seen many scammers recently. so this is good.
I have clients from the middle east (never had problems but hey I am from their originally so most of them know me) We have very few from far east but mostly medium size companies doing a lot of business in the USA. my scammers usually resolve to IP in the USA for some reason.

[.Joe.]

What I usually do after the credit card approval I contact the customer if possible or report it to whatever lead I can get.... let the scammer upload the data and configure it, then I suspend the account, just in case it wears them off. I have not seen many scammers recently. so this is good.
I have clients from the middle east (never had problems but hey I am from their originally so most of them know me) We have very few from far east but mostly medium size companies doing a lot of business in the USA. my scammers usually resolve to IP in the USA for some reason.

People sometime's change their proxies and IP adresses's. Just so that they can protect themselves from this kind of stuff. So maybe that's why you're getting IPs from the US. Or maybe there really from the US (Sorry if that icon was used out of context)

[ITahmed]

Proxies.... you are probably right. I never thought of that. Anyway, I get a lot of pleasure after I see them put 3 to 4 hours worth of uploading and getting the site together and then I go and suspend it... Thank God I have not seen them for months.

[AvailNetworks]

the places that have been a problem for us have been china, taiwan, singapore, israel and a few others that I cannot remember off the top of my head. All IP ranges from those countries have been blocked as 100% of orders have been fraud.

We do support and service english speaking customers anyway so there really is no need to market our services to countries that generally do not have english speaking customers.

It is not about discrimination either, it is about protecting our assets and clients on the server, sometimes you have to take a higher measure to protect your paying customers. This is the same reason we do manual approvals, interview resellers before activating their account, and do some location blocks on ultra high scoring fraud countries. It only takes one person to ruin a good thing

[Jun Luzon]

It only takes one person to ruin a good thing

If it's your hard earned reputation, that will be a terrible loss.
Plus you have to deal with your other customers filing law suits against you.
So I say, it must be hard but sometimes necessary precautions to take.