An Anti-Fraud Service for Fraudsters
Summary: A service called fraudcheck[dot]cc, run by an established spammer on a semi-private cybercrime forum, resells bundles of legitimate anti-fraud checks - apparently through hijacked accounts at MaxMind, a Waltham, Mass. company that screens more than 45 million online transactions per month for 7,000 companies - and accepts payment solely via WebMoney. The service is tuned to block not only fraudulent purchases but also test buys from security researchers, law enforcement and other meddlers, a practice documented in the academic paper Priceless: The Role of Payments in Abuse-Advertised Goods by researchers from George Mason University, UC San Diego and the International Computer Science Institute.
Why it matters: Spam-advertised shops are willing to turn away real customers to avoid a single undercover buy, because an authorized test purchase is what ties a brand-infringing site to its merchant account and bank - and to the fines that follow.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Cybercrime & Law Enforcement
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