Fraud Prevention

[mikesay98]

I'm not going to get into the nuances of this discussion, but saying "unless there's a clear advantage or a large demand" is a bit of a poor way of looking at a business structure.



Just because you don't have tons of customers here clamoring for specific security abilities doesn't mean the demand or advantage doesn't exist. If it truly didn't exist, other companies wouldn't be offering them. I myself have switched many of my products to a different company and am considering switching them all simply because security is way more important to me. Many other websites have differing sales attributes that are sometimes not as good or are sometimes way better than e-junkie (e.g., upselling options). But what I think is important to a lot of people in e-commerce is security, and I have found many other sites that offer way better controls than you do (blocking a name or an email is quite reactive, not proactive). PayPal alone, if you upgrade to Pro, has over 20 Fraud Management filters.



I think at the very least, by assuming there is not a demand for better verification and fraud options, you are not selling your service to the troves of new customers you could be gaining, and slowly losing the ones you have to sites that are far surpassing you.

[E-junkie_Monster]

The fraud filters available with PayPal Payments Pro are completely compatible with our service, as are any other fraud filters built in to any given payment processor that we support.



However, please understand that we cannot double check the payment processor's work on verifying the payment in any significant way. To put "clear advantage or a large demand" into the plainest language possible on this topic, the proposed feature:



1 - Will not work at all

2 - Will make the purchasing process worse for the buyer, resulting in even more reversals and disputes of payments

3 - Has no demand



The first point alone is reason enough not to go forward, but in general we always have to prioritize our development resources by focusing on new features that will actually benefit as many of our users as possible before even considering ones that are the custom request of individual clients.

[mikesay98]

I understand your point, but take for example something I suggested before. I suggested being able to block by country or IP address, and I also think I suggested being able to approve a transaction before you guys fill it.



I think the response was that either it wouldn't work because they'd use a proxy or that you'd look into it. So, right away, there is a pushback from you guys about extra security measures that do, in fact, work. I use a different company for many of my products and the country filter has done wonders to reduce my fraud. Additionally, because I am able to filter transactions and approve the ones that are marked as fraud, I am still able to approve those to trusted customers.



I'm not saying every option out there needs to be on e-Junkie, but I do feel that your commitment to helping your sellers reduce fraud is severely lacking. Blocking emails and names is practically useless and that is all we've been offered for a long time now.

[staunch]

I couldn't agree more, mikesay98 is saying the truth.



Also regarding the 3 points above:



"1 - Will not work at all

2 - Will make the purchasing process worse for the buyer, resulting in even more reversals and disputes of payments

3 - Has no demand"



Regarding 3 - I have provided into a private message TONS OF demand for sellers on eBay who're selling digital goods for many specific keywords (!). Those keywords and categories generates (only for 1 segment) $34B/yearly (excluding another 2-3 platforms, with them that could be $100B+ but the problem there is that majority of products are "physical" and cannot be provided digitally as an activation link or code).



Regarding 1 - I have suggested early on the thread some companies like: telesign.com - which is the best class in providing such solutions. Another ones are: Signifyd, Kount, MaxMind, TeleSign, Reducefraud, Riskified, Twilio and so. But the problem that you have stated early in the year (and in other threads in the past 6-7 years have checked as well) that there is NO API integrations (because of the old flash-based interface, etc.). Don't know if currently you have or have such plans.



I have found that since 01.07.2015 (July 1, 2015): https://www.paypal.com/stories/us/paypal-continues-to-improve-our-global-buyer-protection



"we are announcing the expansion of our Global Buyer Protection globally to cover intangible goods. This includes services, and digital goods, like digital music, digital books, digital games, travel tickets and software downloads.



Beginning July 1, 2015, if you pay for a service or digital product using PayPal and it is significantly different from how it was described, or you pay for one of these items and it is not delivered, PayPal will ensure that the money is credited back to your account."



"Section 13.3

We are increasing the scope of PayPal Purchase Protection to now include coverage for intangible items."



Most important:



"Section 11.4

Although we are expanding PayPal Purchase Protection to buyers for intangible items, Seller Protection will not apply to intangible items. We are including a note in this section about this. In addition, we are adding a definition of Proof of Delivery for intangible or virtual items or services which can help a seller win a buyer’s Item Not Received Purchase Protection Claim."



Check out that what these guys provide to the sellers/vendors: blog.getdpd.com/2015/06/11/paypal-policy-update-added-purchase-protection-for-intangible-goods-and-how-it-affects-you/



A FULL SOLUTION that is giving the seller a REAL "Proof of Delivery for Intangible Items" (which sometimes may cover the chargebacks).



The problem with that DPD company is that they have ZERO integration with eBay, lol. When I've asked them back in June/July if they could be able to implement this scheme: http://i.imgur.com/M4pKD60.png and to provide some "customized" keycode message template (like here in EJ), they said:



"1. We do not have a way to set up the scheme as illustrated in your image.



2- We allow for custom fields to collect info not already collected by our system, I'll post a link to our article on that below:



dpd.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201282583-Cart-Custom-Fields



3- Currently we are working on some big projects and have no plans to set up a scheme like you're looking for, I'm sure that there is a simpler way for you to sell your goods using us without the need for phone verification, but if that is a must for you then it will have to remain a manual operation on your part.



If you have any other questions or concerns just let me know."



So I'm again completely blocked out. Everywhere I see only partial solutions, not full solutions, huh. Which is some kind of completely unacceptable in 2015 … but who's asking me.



___



Currently this is my Excel spreadsheet with frauds/losses/stolen (digital & claimed keys) items and chargebacked: http://i.imgur.com/zXgDlgm.png



€1546 - that amount excludes the bank transfer frauds of ~€1200 from Oct 2014 and ~€350 another frauds (chargebacks) on another PP. Total from Oct 1 2014 to Oct 8 2015: €3096 (£2273 / $3480). Keep in mind that I live in a poorest country (even not in the capital) in Europe where such huge amounts of money people earn for TWO YEARS generally.



Back in April or so I have chatted with a fraudster (the guy with the three €130+€140+€140 transactions). He said that he have scammed from another seller 140 x keys in a matter of few days just by using multiple (stolen) eB & PP accs with money on them, of course (or with an attached CCs). He said to me that he could got (for free) even more (and then back resale in other marketplaces or so) if that particular seller (with 240k+ feedbacks) haven't got into his eBay account settled a rule "max. 2 qty per buyer in 10 days". But that was a zero problem for him with ToNS of eB/PP accounts, huh. He haven't told me how many he have got from other sellers tho. And likely I've prayed to him to not buy anymore from my listings because I'm a small seller losing tons of money because of him and because of other fellas like him. He said that will stop (specially to me). Yes, you read this: I HAVE PRAYED A FRAUDSTER TO NOT BUY DIGITAL GOODS FROM ME! LOL, but it is true!



But this doesn't mattered - as you've checked the spreadsheet - http://i.imgur.com/zXgDlgm.png - I've lost tons more from other fellas like him buying from him, zero problems for them.



It's all about volume. The more volume you have with more sales, more transactions and huge profits, the better you can take the losses. Big sellers with XXX XXX feedbacks can take huge losses monthly or yearly, but I cannot take such €3k losses …



___



PayPal Payments Pro is not available to my PP's account country. That feature (and many more) are usually available ONLY to the major EN-countries: US/CA/UK/AU. Sometimes: DE/AT/CH as well. I'm not from any of them, neither millions of other sellers from other than those countries. I (we) cannot enable/use them because they're NOT available to us. But of course even with them - cannot stop the chargebackers (and fraudsters buying through stolen eB/PP accs) to buy off vendors, surely.



Out of luck …

[E-junkie_Guru]

Selling key codes on eBay is a dying business model that we are unwilling to invest our limited development resources in supporting any further than we already do, which itself is a legacy holdover from many years ago when eBay actually allowed sales of entirely-digital goods.



Currently the only way to sell key codes within compliance with eBay's terms is to physically mail/ship a printed hardcopy of the purchased code(s) to the buyer. This gives the seller ample opportunity to delay shipment long enough to discover whether the payment may have been fraudulent due a stolen/hacked PayPal or card account, and to mail/ship the item with tracking to confirm actual delivery. While it's permissible to provide instant delivery of a digital copy in addition to the physical hardcopy, this is simply inadvisable with key codes the seller has purchased at wholesale for retail resale, due to the rampant fraud for such goods and potential loss of wholesale costs for fraudulently purchased keys. You would be entirely within your rights to refuse offering instant digital delivery of codes at all, in which case you would have no need for our service in selling such products anyway.



We are planning to allow blocking transactions by country according to GeoIP lookup of the buyer's connection IP, since we're already doing GeoIP lookups on every order for VAT purposes now anyway. We will post in our Service Status & Updates forum if and when this becomes possible. Aside from such enhancement to our existing Block Buyers/Transactions feature, we simply have no simple way to insert any other sort of "interrupt" in our order-processing routine that could call out to a third-party service for verification before we actually process the order, so adding that would be a major project of high cost and limited benefit to the tiny handful of our clientele who may benefit from it (and it doesn't appear that you have ever been a paying client of ours), just to support a business model which is becoming increasingly obsolete and inviable.

[staunch]

eBay has 4 x Global Regions and 14 x Country website. While in most of them it's forbidden since 2008 to sale digital goods (but other sellers still same them like recipes, ebooks, PDFs, etc.), in ONE of the country-site it is COMPLETELY ALLOWED not only from the eBay site rules but from the countries government laws. It's completely allowed to resale any kind of digital goods, including second one ones - like game accounts, software accounts, player accounts and so (while it's forbidden on most of platform's ToS) but the government > platform ToS. So eBay plays into a government area where they must comply with the law (and allow sellers to resale digital goods, incl. keys).



While back in 2008 it was not so popular to "open game box, scan the key and put it into a JPG file or .txt for resale" - since 2010 and afterwards it's quite popular doing this. The general issue is that there're tons of HK/CN resellers who as always do NOT pay any VAT and always have best of the best prices delivering to the customers within 5-30 mins. And they work 24/7/365. I'm alone. Only with EJ can beat their "delivery-times" and therefore grab attention/traffic to my listings and sales. People saying like "instant delivery in 1 min. GUARANTEED" is better than 5-30 mins, right ? But fraudsters also know this as well.



Regarding the "physically mail/ship a printed hardcopy of the purchased code(s) to the buyer" – I've asked in the past other competitor resellers do they physically ship the keys as letters to the buyer's address. They said NO - they only fill up the tracking code with the key and that's it. And therefore the item is marked as "sent", have "some tracking" (even not valid, but who cares? Buyers leaves positive feedbacks when they activate the keys, huh and download). Both buyers arе satisfied & eBay, even PP. All systems.



Yeah, any buyer can say "I haven't received it, not works, etc." - that's why there is ZERO Seller Protection on digital services & sales. That's why other competitor above (DPD) added some "Proof of delivery" feature few months ago but it still useless when they have zero integration and plans for eBay.



The growing "selling codes on eBay" business (specially into the country where it's completely allowed) is popular but not for any man. People must know that they may (and they DO) lose tons of money because of this.



Still when some sellers have an E-Commerce Store like Magento - they could add it (or use another module for this) but still without ANY protection from PP from fraudsters. But thankfully - there're Magento anti-fraud modules that is taking care of the risk scores, geo detections, etc. stuff and declining the bad transactions. Something that is not available on eBay >,<.



---



You're adding "blocking transactions by country according to GeoIP lookup of the buyer's connection IP" - which would be good feature. But what about "Proof of delivery" (obtaining customer's IP address, useragent, device, download date, etc.)? Or it won't be possible.



Thanks anyone.

[sprudio]

I put my two cents here. In PayPal I have an option enabled it is called Risk Control. There you can stop any payments from certain countries, you can opt to not accept German transaction, I set up my payment risk control very high- order over a certain amount are denied etc. etc. I have it and works excellent. In order to have this you need to have paypal pro.