Maxmind and Phone Verification

[rbro]

We get a great deal of fraud errors, and we got one today, but when I looked at the phone verification logs (which are very confusing imo), it showed the call was answered and the code was played. Then I realized that was the case for several orders that had been marked as fraud. I called the number for today's order myself and it was "out of order". I love the idea of the phone verification in theory and it's not very expensive, but I'm just wondering how reliable it is in general. I also have a hard time understanding the logs etc. Anyone else have trouble with this service?

[kris1351]

Maxmind has been very undependable for us also, I think we are going to switch back to Varilogix which we used when with MB.

[rbro]

I haven't even looked into any alternatives. Does Varilogix integrate as well and easily with WHMCS? Do they have a phone verification service as well? How's the pricing compared to Maxmind?

[chickendippers]

Varilogix only offer their Fraudcall service at the moment (the telephone verification service). We have been with them for a long time and it generally seems good (only been one or two "error at our end" responses over the years), as such our pricing is probably outdated, but we pay $1.25 per approved call, all orders that are declined are free.

 

The admin interface is very good, I was surprised to find how sparse MaxMind's was in comparison. You can choose what types of numbers to call (mobile, voip etc), what details the call gives out, and you can configure white and black listed numbers.

[rbro]

That sounds pretty good. I'll have to check them out. I would imagine that there isn't a large percentage of fraudulent orders from people who submit in their real phone numbers.

[ur]

It would be nice if you could use a mix of the two. I have read that someone suggested this in the forums before, but unaware that it was considered.

[Nessy]

We are using Maxmind and have found it very useful. Not looked into any other alternatives.

[othellotech]

MaxMind seems a bit hit-and-miss

We've been using it for a long while and 1 in 5 times, it seems to timeout/return nothing to WHMCS resulting in orders marked as fraud - resulting in extra work when the client complains

The telephone verification sometimes simply doesnt happen, and also clients themselves are notoriously bad at providing the right phone numbers !

 

*However* it hasnt let any fraudulent orders through recently, so does actually stop the Nigerians with UK addresses and US c/cards

[pacwebhosting]

We have just stopped using telephone verification.

 

I just don't see the point of paying for a telephone call when it is more than likely fraud anyway so we just have our reject score set at a decent level.

 

And in any event it is very easy for someone to get a UK number which is redirected to anywhere in the world free so instead of telephone verifying and risking them having one of those numbers and getting through its more sensible to just reject them as 99/100 in our experience are fraud at the score level returned.

 

We have also seen a few occasions where maxmind just does not reply also

 

And as for Nigeria it must be the number one place for internet fraud in the world we get 10+ attempts a day from there alone.

 

Paul

[ganesh.rao]

We've been using MaxMind's GeoIP+minFraud and Phone Verification for a seriously long time (about a year) WITHOUT a single problem.

 

Its worked, perfectly for us. We used to get about nearly 1 fraudulent order every day which we used to accept and get entrapped later on. Now its reduced to 2-3 a month! Super and fantastic service by MaxMind.

 

God knows why it isn't working with you guys.

[urevised]

We also have stopped using phone verification. I find it just annoys people and they usually just close the page and go somewhere else. I think there are better ways to deal with fraud and this is not it.

 

3DSecure payments work very well for us and keep the fraud to a minimum. Also you can usually spot a fraudulant transaction a mile off:

 

- Order Value is more than usual

- Order Quantity is more than usual

- Card Address and Postcode desn't match the one in WHMCS

- Location IP Doesn't Match Issuer IP

- Order is from a high risk country such as Turkey (We get a lot from there)

- Client signs up without first asking for support on the hosting package, the majority of users usually have questions before they sign up.

 

These are some of the checks i usually do and if i get 4 of them that are true then the transaction is usually fraudulant.

 

Hope this helps

[crucial]

We get a great deal of fraud errors, and we got one today, but when I looked at the phone verification logs (which are very confusing imo), it showed the call was answered and the code was played. Then I realized that was the case for several orders that had been marked as fraud. I called the number for today's order myself and it was "out of order". I love the idea of the phone verification in theory and it's not very expensive, but I'm just wondering how reliable it is in general. I also have a hard time understanding the logs etc. Anyone else have trouble with this service?

 

Where are the Maxmind logs? I'd be interested to see if we are getting any errors...