A new take on an old micro-charge credit fraud

[thewayne]

This has been around for a while, they charge just under $10 to your card in the hope that it's something that you don't remember but accept as something that you probably bought. The long-running one charged $9.84 for 'online learning', the new one charges a variety of amounts between $10-15 and the vendor is BLS*Weblearn or PLI*Weblearn, they're probably the same people just changing up their game a bit.

http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/03/whos-behind-the-bls-weblearn-credit-card-scam/

Comments

[silveradept]

One woild think, though, that if they're microcharging, when someone noticed or complained, the whole scheme would come to a crashiing halt or they would be blacklisted as a vendor.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

People do notice, but they notice in small enough numbers to make it worth the criminals to continue doing it. It's sort of like spam: if less than 0.1% of people reply to spam email, it's a successful campaign.

The problem is that the scammer either controls or is the credit card processor. I'm not sure if credit card processors are multi-level, that is, if they go through another clearing level before it hits the banks, but I think that's the place to start. De-frock the credit card processor, or force them at their level to de-frock the scammer, and it will at least force the scammer to work harder and will stop it for a while.

[silveradept]

And that's the best we can hope for, isn't it? To make the scam not worth the effort relative to the payout.