CNN sticking it to VISA/MC

one day in the not so distant future the issue of surfer fraud will have to be dealt with as more and more mainstream biz gets hit with those chargebackin leaches...

I don't see why you don't send collection agentcies after everyone that chargesback. Have it so that the agency gets 50% of whatever of the amount. Better that they just writing it off.
ZoiNk

ya, would be a nice followup segment on cnn. porn sites fighting back against fraud

and a nice addition to that would be to take the remaining money and take out an advert in their hometown local newspaper with their name and face on it

That's actually a good idea en masse. Maybe one agency (a couple of guys) that fires off shameful legal letters to people who chargeback. Kinda make the letters plain enough in wording to let signifigant others and maybe even nosy neighbors know it came from a porn site. It wouldn't get the money back in most cases but it would create enough publicity in the press to make people wary about frivolous chargebacks. Quickly.

might even stop people from signing up all together..

now more cardholders just learned how easy it is to chargeback...

they also named the banks who process porn,

and they said that without credit cards there is no porn,

I took the segment very badly, its like the guy was trying to expose the banks and like he wanted to kill our industry,


but whats funny is its on CNN< aol time warner,

one of the largest porn companies in the world,

being the second largest cable company in america im sure they sell lots of pay per view porn,

and also with aol being the largest ISP in the world,

shit loads of porn is download through them,

and they make money from transit rights,

remember when they turned off congent for a week over that,

and we all know congent is full of porn,

exactly,

they sit there gigling at our industry, with no mention of the porn money they make,

then they tell the viewers how to commit fraud,

then they atack visa and the banks for processing for us,

it was a totaly negative and bullshit piece of journalism

lets all get togther and sue cnn

Ya gotta point.

I don't think the mainstream guys will ever get hit with amount of chargebacks we deal with..

I mean explaining away a book you bought on Amazon is much easier than explaining why you bought a $40 membership to a tranny site haha

As for the segment I thought it was fucked up too, now porn surfers know that charging back is actually possible.

i think i might have an idea.... lol
send everyone that signs up a free sticker or something with delivery confirmation, then we could prove they signed up. the details would have to be worked out, but it is something that could work...

True - but the bill you get from Amazon doesn't also include a dvd and cd that you didn't want and didn't notice were pre-checked

what about columbia house and their cds for a penny program. they send cds you never asked for and charge you for them.

But they don't charge you, they bill you, right?

Depends, if you registered with payment by credit card, they charge.

NOOOO!!! You do NOT wanna do that. Although I sympathize with you the problem is there's lots of identity fraud. If Joe Sixpack's credit card is stolen by Slippery Smith, and Slippery Smith charges back a purchase from some porn site and some agency publishes Joe Sixpack's name and address, whooo nelly, you're talkin' bout a lawsuit even angels would fear to tread.

The adult biz is the first and most innovative on processing on the web. It's not the most criminal by any means. Believe you me, I've worked and do work in mainstream 'respectable' industries and the fraud ratio in comparison to the adult industry is by no means in the same ballpark. I don't care what the cc companies say. They're crooks to their hearts as it is.

Don't worry, as time goes by you'll see a security war like you've never seen before. It's high time somebody put the reigns on this credit industry and just look at the astronomical fraud case numbers of the past few years.

We've all got to take an active part and never team up with a crook. When you let him slide he'll slide right up under you.

I think that Jonny5 has a good idea.

If you were to send a new member something via return receipt in the us mail, you have a sig and can use that to help you fight against the charge back.. It is not fool proof, but it could help.


The really funny thing about vias and all the new reg's is that they are working very hard to cut themselves and the banks out of the money generated by the adult online business.


Wanna see some amazing stats??

Pornography Statistics 2003


Internet Pornography statistics become outdated very quickly, especially in the Internet environment where numbers change daily. The following pornography statistics are current as of 2003. These statistics have been derived from a number of different reputable sources including Google, WordTracker, PBS, MSNBC, NRC, and Alexa research.


Pornography Industry Statistics

Size of the industry $57.0 billion world-wide - $12.0 billion US
Adult videos $20.0 billion
Escort services $11.0 billion
Magazines $ 7.5 billion
Sex clubs $ 5.0 billion
Phone sex $ 4.5 billion
Cable/Pay per view $ 2.5 billion
Internet $ 2.5 billion
CD-Rom $ 1.5 billion
Novelties $ 1.0 billion
Other $ 1.5 billion
Porn revenue is larger than all combined revenues of all professional football, baseball and basketball franchises.
US porn revenue exceeds the combined revenues of ABC, CBS, and NBC (6.2 billion)
Child pornography generates $3 billion annually

Internet Porn Statistics

Pornographic websites 4.2 million (12% of total websites)
Pornographic pages 372 million
Daily pornographic search engine requests 68 million (25% of total search engine requests)
Daily pornographic emails 2.5 billion (8% of total emails)
Average daily pornographic emails/user 4.5 per internet user
Monthly Pornographic downloads (Peer-to-peer) 1.5 billion (35% of all downloads)
Daily Gnutella ?child pornography? requests 116 thousand
Websites offering illegal child pornography 100 thousand
Sexual solicitations of youth made in chat rooms 89%
Youths who received sexual solicitation 20%
Worldwide visitors to pornographic web sites 72 million annually

Children?s Internet Porn Statistics

Average age of first Internet exposure to pornography 11 years old
Largest consumer of Internet pornography 12-17 age group
15-17 year olds having multiple hard-core exposures 80%
8-16 year olds having viewed porn online 90% (most while doing homework)
7-17 year olds who would freely give out home address 29%
7-17 year olds who would freely give out email address 14%
ChildrenÕs characters linked to thousands of porn links 26 (including Pokeman and Action Man)

Adult Internet Porn Statistics

Men admitting to accessing pornography at work 20%
Women admitting to accessing pornography at work 13%
US adults who regularly visit Internet pornography websites 40 million
Promise Keeper men who viewed pornography in last week 53%
Christians who said pornography is a major problem in the home 47%
Adults admitting to Internet sexual addiction 10%
Breakdown of male/female visitors to pornography sites 72% male - 28% female


As you can probably see from reading the above statistics, it is important to have a complete Internet safety program in place consisting of an Internet filter and parental controls.

Internet Filter Review endeavors to contain the most current Internet pornography statistics usage. If you do not see an Internet pornography statistic that you feel should be included, please email to [email protected].

Chargebacks are so easy because the nature of our product.
We sell digital user subscriptions to customers. People pay for this
with the credit card by submitting a form....There is NO signature
that authorises the sale thus making it difficult to verify that the
cardholder is the one buying the subscription.

No matter what logs you can produce it still doesn't fully proof
that the cardholder made the sale.....it could be another person
using his computer.

If you were to ship a tangible product to the customer you will
receive the cardholders signature upon delivery thus making it
harder for them to chargeback. At least then you have a sale slip
that contains the signature of the cardholder which could be used
as valid proof in case of a chargeback.

As long as there is no good electronic accepted id method that
will be accepted as valid in court this industry will be subject to
user induced fraud.

But I think if you would do research to the ratio between
customer induced fraud or operator/webmaster induced fraud I
would be very suprised if customer induced fraud makes up for
a big percentage of the chargeback problems in this industry.

Would be an interesting thing to get some facts and numbers on

DynaMite

ok... you got me there...

CNN Sucks. Every single time they get some BS story about SARS they start coming down on Toronto! Facts? They don't give a shit about facts. They're idiots.

Chargebacks happen in all areas of e commerce.
A rep from AMazon.com told us that even though books are delivered, and signed for, they still get hit with outrageous
chargebacks. That is again.. with a signature.

A rep from BOA also told us that any dispute regarding an internet transaction will be chargedback to the benefit of the cardholder.

Part of this, you have to remember is our industry is websavvy.
People who are answering your phone calls at the bank may not be. The people who are actually been frauded online and have legit issues have created an atmosphere for if one is bad everyone must be bad.

Chargeback ratios for your processor (Ibill etc..) are different than your Visa chargeback ratios. Yes, consumers have learned they can chargeback but in doing this they must have that credit card canceled and be issued another. Why? Because if the credit card is not canceled the company they are charging back on could just re run the charge.

The banks themselves will only allow a chargeback of 90 days while processors could refund further back if the consumer choses to go to them first. Some probably appease to avoid the chargeback by the bank but some do not.

I would be inclined to believe that since adult does collectively more transactions than say "books or shoes" the percentages would not be in our favor. It's still an e commerece issue and one I don't doubt will need to be ironed out. This is still new territory.. in the large scheme of things...

Katie

I'll tell you why. If you try it, the FTC will shut you down in two seconds.

They will have one person who legitimately had their cc stolen and was entitled to a chargeback and you will be shut down. IMHO that is the only reason not to run with a collection agency, but it is a reason that you simply can't avoid. (Don't believe me? Ask anyone who has ever dealt with the FTC if they will sieze all your assests before they even look into the matter . . . )

I saw the segment. It seemed the cnn male interviewer was defending the industry (by asking the 'won't there/ shouldn't there always be a place on porn type of questions' - it's no different than using your cc for other transactions online of offline) while the guest speaker was leaning toward advocating of shutting adult down in the US (naming the banks, and saying it could very well be a real possiblity of eradicating porn in the US should they decide to overnight). He seemed quite pleased about the 1% and your outta business rule.

What show was this? I'd like to try to catch the rerun before the day's over.

Some of those stats are pretty close to reality, but some I really think are not accurate.

No way in hell are adult magazines a $7.5 Billion industry for example.

That's got to be off by at least $5 Billion.

I agree. I don't think the adult web is that low on the totemn pole either. Although it would be higher than most others on the profit vs revenue scale even if it is.

I'd also like to know how they track the child porn revenue. It seems to me that if they can track the flow of cash they can bust the pervs making money from it at the same time. It just doesn't make sense.

exactly.

Pornguy, thanks for the stats. They speak for themselves. Shows you the power of the human libido.

This to me is an anthropologist's dream. It reveals so much about our culture and our species. Absolutely intriguing.

It also shows that above the table this industry is humongous. Just imagine the revenue that is below the radar.

Difference nowadays is in the old days the underworld ran all the porn and prostitution and nowadays everybody and their third cousin are in it.

Just think, there are still billions of people without computers. What'll it be like in 10 years?

As a side joke, I recall the stories of late about how our computers and technological breakthroughs came about because some 'alien' spaceship crashed and was back engineered to find it's secrets. Just think, aliens travelled umpteen gagillion miles to Earth, crashed and had their hard earned work turned into jerk off machines.

" If it makes absolutely no fucking sense at all, it's gotta be the truth. " --- Greg B 2007

KRL,
I dont think that they actually mean the sales of the magazine it's self. I think that they mean the industry. Consider how much Jack Daniels pays in ads in thos mag every month.

My wife worked for a business magazine for some time. We were amazed when we found out that they really dont care how many of the monthly magazines are bought. Or how many are mailed on sub.. That is not where they make the money. They only care how many are printed, and they use those stats for the sales of the ad's. It's crazy how they get away with it, but there is no real way for the the people placing the ad to know if it worked... There are no click throughs..
The magazine only mad 3% of their income from the sales of the magazines.

As for the stats in general, I have no idea where they got the info, but most of it seems pretty close.

POrnwolf.. I think that they guessed those stats..about CP. But you never know.. DId you notice that aol, msn and yahoo, say that they know who the top 10 spammers are, but have yet to do anything about them?? AMazing...

better yet make a "mistake" and mail it to house number 6 instead of 5 ... so that the neighbors will have to deliver the mail to the person by hand.

Folks,

What do u expect them to say...

"Porn is a good thing that CC companies should process for so I can buy a membership to socalcoeds and see some amateur girls getting fucked."

They have to be negative. Its porn....nobody like us.

Interesting stuff for sure.. I wish I could have seen it.. If anyone finds a link for it online even in text format please post it

Yea it was crazy how fast it came out. Right after all the shit hit the fan.

I watched it. and they were very well informed on what was going on.

they must have put the piece together a while ago and was ready for it. just seems very fishy

Monthly Pornographic downloads (Peer-to-peer) 1.5 billion (35% of all downloads)


Aint that a bitch... haha no wonder sales figures are around a 30% drop..

Media

CNN - Bushlickers and full of shit.

Maybe they should be 'outed' for the amount of revenue their group gains from the adult industry ....

Been over CNN with a toothcomb and can't find anything. Anyone got a link to it ?