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Rogue Anti-Virus Victims Rarely Fight Back
krebsonsecurity writes "One big reason why rogue anti-virus continues to make major bucks for scam artists: relatively few victims ever ask their credit card company or bank to reverse the charges for the phony security software — even when the victims don't even receive the worthless software they were promised. I recently found several caches of data for affiliates of a rogue anti-virus distribution program, and the data showed that in one set of attacks only 367 out of more than 2,000 scammed disputed the charge. A second rogue anti-virus campaign scammed more than 1,600 people, and yet fewer than 10 percent fought the charges."
Although the company that was given the cc number was shady - the customers actually authorised the charge. When you process a charge back it has to fall into a certain category with the processor. The customer can claim that the card was stolen, the customer can claim that the charge was never theirs, they can claim that they never received the merchandise, etc. But in this case the customers still had their cards, they actually did initiate the transaction, and they received the merchandise, i.e. their pc got "fixed".
There is no chargeback category for this, and as long as these card numbers aren't then resold and used in a traditionally fraudulent manner, nothing will happen.
It would be like trying to reverse the $1,000.00 charges for the champagne room strippers because they were ugly. Just you didn't get what you thought you'd get doesn't mean you can reverse the charges.
Wrong. This is like making a purchase for a product online and the product is not delivered or making a purchase online and the product does not perform the task for which it was purchased. Both of these circumstances are/should be covered by some form of protection.
You could deposit it in an ATM.
I remove this crap for a living, and I've seen the scam up close. .exe files without prompting, but they mostly stop bombarding the victim with warnings... for a month or two.
When the victim pays, the scareware purveyor removes most of the program... which "fixes" the PC. They leave behind a back door, and Registry entries making the machine download
Then, they attack again, trying to get more money. I've had a few customers who paid for the first attack, then finally called for help when they got hit again; it was easy to see what the first program did, and track down the quick site redirect that brought on the second infestation.
The real criminals here: Visa and Mastercard, for maintaining merchant accounts for these scumbags. Brian Krebs exposed this, and got it shut down... for two weeks or so, and they've back ever since without interruption.
The small charge could easily be a precursor to a large charge. Thieves will often make small purchases online to test cards before buying something of value. Obviously getting something shipped is not an option if you're using a stolen card, and they wouldn't want to attract attention to themselves in a physical store by using a card that's been reported stolen.
No, they don't. The scammers don't 'fix' anything, they just take the money. They might give them an 'anti-virus software' (read, more malicious software), but they aren't going to remove their damn malicious software just because you gave them $80.
Even if they did, extortion is illegal, and thus a perfectly viable charge reversal.
Sorry, but your apparent argument of "people are dumb and should pay for getting scammed" doesn't really float. Basically the entire point of charge reversals is to deal with scammers.
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
It's a quote from "Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels"