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How an archaic fraud detection system blocks a sale, and why you need Verosint

A cautionary tale about how overzealous fraud rules can hurt your business.
Written by
Bertold Kolics
Published on
December 8, 2022

Online shopping has saved many of us busy folks a lot of time and money. I can search multiple retailers for the best item at the lowest price and never have to interact with other shoppers or sales folks.

We’re doing some minor remodeling at home. The other day, I found a great price on bathroom faucets and hardware online. If you’ve gone through a remodel, you know that good hardware is expensive. I had not purchased from this site before, so I placed an order and at the same time registered for an account. All done successfully, with no errors or issues.

A day later I received an email that my order was flagged as fraudulent, and it was canceled.  I called the customer service number to ask why this has occurred and they cannot tell me why or what part of my order and registration was deemed ‘fraudulent,’ but they tell me to resubmit the order. Since I’m on the phone, I ask the rep if there is any way I can prove my identity. I get no answer.

They cannot tell me why or what part of my order and registration was deemed ‘fraudulent.’

I really like this hardware and it’s a great price. I resubmit the order and I even email customer service the order number, hoping to avoid another issue. Again, no errors are reported back to me through the process. I call the company a day after placing the second order. The order was flagged again as fraudulent by their system and canceled. I have now been in touch with customer service through phone and email, which should verify that I am a real person trying to make a purchase.

I placed the order again – this time with a different credit card number that I use daily. I call customer service immediately after submitting my order. I am told again that my order was flagged as fraudulent. They can’t tell me why. I’m furious! I tell them to delete my account and that I’ll take my business elsewhere.

Just so happens, I work for 443ID. We’re a company that measures identities’ risk of fraud at a granular level and in real-time by checking each component of an identity against multiple sources of Open Source Intelligence data (OSINT). Out of curiosity – I input all the parameters that I entered during my order and registration into our signal playground (email, IP and phone). In less than a second, I see a report with a LOW score of 0, no risk for fraud.

How much money did this company lose in a month or year, with this archaic security in place? How many customers can your business afford losing?  Give us a try at app.verosint.com.

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Bertold Kolics

Bertold Kolics has held various roles in software engineering for over 20 years including pre-sales, professional services, development, quality assurance and most recently management positions. Having worked for both very large corporations and small businesses including a startup, he has seen and experienced many of the problems that today’s software engineers face on a daily basis. Driven by transformational leadership practices, he constantly pushes for changes in engineering teams by fostering open, honest communication, which improves both team productivity as well as job satisfaction.