Compromised Credit Card Database Expanded

MALIBU, CA- 05/19/2004 -  CardCops has introduced two new features for merchants who scrub in real time against its database of compromised credit card numbers from cyberspace. This second release of  MERCHANT ALARM will give higher risk merchants better tools to keep chargeback rates down and under the prescribed levels desired by the credit card associations.

Merchants can now collectively contribute to and scrub transactions against a database from a "private group" like an ISO or an E-commerce vertical market. This allows for a higher probability of catching a fraudulent order from a carder or a "friendly fraud" consumer who is targeting a specific industry. This also allows the "private group" to better police themselves from hackers looking for specific services or affiliate generated sales commissions.

The second new feature from CardCops is a "card monitoring" service available exclusively for its MERCHANT ALARM users. This feature allows merchants, upon scrubbing an order, to submit that credit card to a CARD MONITOR service. CardCops then monitors that card for 30 days (longer if desired), and if found, alerts the merchant. This reduces fraudulent orders and chargebacks when filling back orders or billing on a re-occurring basis.


"We realized that ISOs and groups of merchants are often not able to share negative data gathered from one or more of their merchants or members for the benefit of all their merchants or members," CardCops.com president Michael Brown states. "This is generally the case because merchants often use different vendors and software to perform the same transaction processing functions. So, along with scrubbing a transaction for fraud, we found a way to simultaneously enable an ISO or group of merchants to pool and check their data at one common point.”

“We also realized that, very often, fraud doesn't appear at the time of the initial transaction, but rather days or weeks later,” Brown continues. “With our new card monitor service, merchants are automatically notified of fraudulent activity on a previously-approved transaction, which enables them to stop shipment or to remove a recurring billing account that otherwise would have resulted in lost product and chargeback fees."

CardCops gets compromised credit cards from its proprietary information gathering bot, which roams the net, internet's newsgroups, search engines, and IRC chat rooms looking for credit card and personally identifiable information.  In addition to this automated data gathering, CardCops also obtains compromised card information from fraudulent order attempts from participating merchants, from consumers themselves, from the underground via an amnesty program, and from an anonymous disclosure program.

"If a credit card or other financial information has been stolen, chances are that it will be sold, traded, bragged about, or verified by the thief before it's first used," Brown further explains. "It is at this point that the information can be discovered by CardCops, flagged as compromised, and entered into our database. Typically, we become aware of a problem weeks or months in advance of the issuing bank or individual consumer.”

Contact: Mike Brown President  CardCops.com 310.593.1494  merchantalarm@cardcops.com