Being an Internet company we sure have to put up with a lot of credit card fraud. I’ve been dealing with it a lot lately, and I’ve noticed that like…90% of it comes from Vietnamese ‘hackers’. We do what we can to minimize the fraud that makes its way through, but they still manage to find ways around our automated checks.

Usually they just sign up without bothering to put up a website at the domains they register, so it’s more of a way for them to test if a card number is valid or not. Sometimes they’ll upload a few Vietnamese music videos or whatever, but mostly I just see empty directories.

We usually find out about these sites because the real credit card holder calls or emails us and is all like “Who are you guys and why are you charging me $119.40?”

Usually they’re very understanding about what’s happened and we go ahead and just refund the charge.

Sometimes they get pissy though- “Oh I could give two shits if you refund the charge, bastards. I’ve already sent this to the cops and you’re going DOWN. You can’t just charge people if you don’t have their card.” I feel like saying “Hey welcome to 1996! You can buy things on the Internet now.” We refund them anyway, but man. You’d think that people who have their credit card numbers stolen would be a little more appreciative of the situation.