Visa and MasterCard Take Fight To Scammers

An anonymous reader writes "In his latest story, Brian Krebs reports on a collaboration between brand holders and credit card companies to shut down payment processing for rogue online pharmacies, pirate software sellers and fake anti-virus scams. By conducting test purchases, they map out which banks are being used to accept payments for which scams. Writes Krebs, 'Following the money trail showed that a majority of the purchases were processed by just 12 banks in a handful of countries, including Azerbaijan, China, Georgia, Latvia, and Mauritius.' These results are then fed to Visa and Mastercard who typically shut down the merchant accounts 'within one month after a complaint was lodged.' If you can't accept payments, you can't make money — and without money you can't pay the spammers who advertise your product. This effort is apparently quite effective and has led to much concern by those running such sites."

Comments

I suppose it's good

[rsilvergun]

that we're shutting down scams and such, but it's interesting to think about some of the side effects of all this computing horse power and the general increase in productivity it entails. Basically, these are criminals living on the fringes, and with modern statistical analysis getting so easy (because you can crunch massive amounts of data on the cheap) we're going to start really squeezing those people. There are millions and millions of people in this class. Some are criminals (like these) and some are honest people who used to get by on waste product and over production. If you live in the States and are over 30 you probably remember bags of Halloween candy for 50 cents. You don't find them any more because they've crunched the numbers and figured out exactly how much candy to order so they don't come up short. Best you'll see if 50% off and a weak selection.

It's like that everywhere in society. It's going to be interesting (and scary) to see what happens as we squeeze these people more and more. Most countries are moving towards Austerity and 19th century style 'Invisible Hand' economics so we're not just going to hand them food. Roving bands of bandits, anyone?

Re:Does this affect legitimate online pharmacies?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

If they are also selling brand name medicine that they purchased from those companies and not distributing generics under brand names. If you RTFA, you'd have learned that is what is getting them shut down: infringing on the brands of pharmaceuticals. Many are switching to just promoting them under the generic name to avoid being shut down. Companies also selling "OEM" copies of software are also getting shut down for selling pirated versions. Its more of a trademark thing than anything else.

Re:Does this affect legitimate online pharmacies?

[TapeCutter]

I watched a doco a while back about some people from doctors without borders and others who were talking about fake medicine, apparently it's quite a problem in Africa, they have fake generics as well as fake brands, and by fake I mean no active ingredient. Even fake saline solution for hospitals is a problem, it had became so troublesome for visiting surgeons on this documentary that they were bringing their own saline with them. As much as I resent a huge bureaucracy around medicine, all the alternatives I've seen are much worse.