Credit Card Fraud Prevention And Detection

 

Will banks and credit card firms use the IP address as a way to detect and prevent fraud online?

Registering your devices as a way of fraud detection (the IP addresses of the devices).

When you make a purchase online you are asked for a credit card number and sometimes the CSC, Card Security Code,from the back. What would be interesting is, if the IP address was recorded by the seller site and sent to the financial payment provider to see if there is a match. When there is not a match, a higher level of security screening can be enabled. This would enable a customer to register their devices before making purchases to enable better fraud detection. This should prevent a false positive, which interrupts the customer unnecessarily.

The reason this comes up is, as of late, I’ve made a few online purchases with online merchants I’ve not done business with recently. AT&T, Carbonite and Joker.com are a few of the services. After making a purchase with Joker, my phone rang and there was a cryptic message. Hung up and within a minute another call came across. The second one was clearer, but not clear enough. One of the purchases was listed as being from Alpharetta, GA for $25. It was not a charge I recognized as I have not been to or knowingly done any business with a firm in the location recently. Well, after logging in to my bank website, I saw a $25 charge from AT&T. Oh, that’s a legitimate charge I thought. Who knew they used Alpharetta, GA as their billing location. Time will tell if that charge is rejected and causes my AT&T account to be suspended.

Apple Ping – A Social Network For Music

 

Apple Ping is a social network of sorts. My use of it is still in the earliest stages. Since that is the case, I am only following a few users currently. One of the things that is interesting is seeing other music people have liked or recently purchased. The ability to hear a sample of these songs makes for an interesting way to discover new music. When one finds a track one likes and enjoys, one can buy it on the spot or add it to a Wish List. I’ve added two songs to the wish list.

What would be cool is if in the Wish List there was a way to see who the user was that brought the song to my attention. If there are certain users that inspire more people to buy more music they could be considered to be industry influencers.

Questions

• How important is it to know who the influencers are?
• Would top influencers be able to monetize their position as such?
• Will Apple create an influencers list? If so, will they make it public or will they sell or share that data with people that want to distribute their music?