Questions about 3rd Man with Actinic Payments

[atco]

We've just started using Actinic Payments. This time last year we were using shared SSL and doing security checks through Third Man Security, which was excellent at weeding out potential scams. At this time of year we always seem to attract fraudsters looking to buy our perfume. Fortunately they are so stupid that the orders appear obvious scams - for example they order about 3 of everything, their addresses are usaually flats in big cities and their names look a bit dubious. However, Actinic Payments are releasing the payments on these orders, which have supposedly been checked through Third Man. When we phone Third Man, he tells us that on no account should we send out the goods on that particular card. So is Actinic Payments using the same Third Man that we are phoning?? We are now checking EVERY transaction ourselves through phoning Third Man because we cannot trust Actinic Payments. One particular order this week looked an obvious scam - the "customer" tried the same order with five different cards. The first four were rightly declined by Actinic Payments but the fifth one was accepted. When we checked on the phone with Third Man he told us it was unsafe and to decline it! Through bitter experience in previous years, we have been charged back about two months down the line for fraudulent cards and we don't intend losing any more money this year. So as a warning to everyone - even though Actinic Payments are releasing your order as being safe be very careful!!

[saucysal]

Actinic Payments Probably Not Unique

I suspect that it is the same with all payment service providers. We use SagePay, and check the Third Man reports about 3 times a day. If there is a high score/red flag, we look at the delivery address, which is usually somewhere like a bank in the City or a well-known firm, such as RBS or HSBC. These we usually let through if all else is fine. However, if the delivery address is a home address, and the address and/or telephone number, ip address, etc are dodgy, but the payment passed 3D-Secure, we will despatch signature required, as the fraud could be that they will say that they didn't receive the goods. Before we bothered checking the Third Man reports, we despatched goods to somebody whose payment had passed 3D-Secure OK, despatched by trackable means with proof of delivery, but not signature required, and we had a charge-back that we couldn't defend as there was no signature. We then found that the Third Man said that his address (only occupier) and telephone number had a high risk of fraud. In brief, don't trust or expect the service provider to check the Third Man for you.
Sarah

[Darren B]

you dont say what version of actinic your using, but third man in v10 will tell you if its suspect or not when you download the results. This shows as a green or red spot on each order.

Now this is being improved and includes even more data and explainations than ever

AP's third man is probably the best result out of all of them as you get it with the order unlike other PSP's

[atco]

Using V10. Will continue to phone Third Man on every order. Suspect orders are mostly obvious - flats in the city centres, names and addresses typed completely in lower case, Yahoo email addresses that don't match names, multiple orders of the same product, mobile phone numbers that don't exist, customer named Brian Owen calls in with foreign accent saying "Mr Brian here, where's my order", etc etc. If they weren't so stupid or greedy they might get away with it but fortunately they are not. But I still don't understand why Third Man with Actinic Payments passes a payment whilst he doesn't over the phone.

[cbarling]

The way the system works with Actinic Payments is that The 3rd Man check is made exactly as with SagePay and other 3rd Man users.

All payments are checked by The 3rd Man, with the results being downloaded into Actinic a while after the payment has been authorised by the banking system. No payments are automatically held up or rejected by The 3rd Man. The 3rd Man result is that there is either a green indicator or a red indicator.

The merchant makes the decision what to do. Not only do they have the fraud score, they also are told how that score is made up. They can either decide to accept the order or reject it. In the latter case they should void the payment, cancel the order and contact the buyer to tell them.

The reason it works like this is because different industries have different fraud profiles.

I hope you have an account with The 3rd Man and are paying them directly if you are calling them. Use of Actinic Payments doesn't entitle anyone to call The 3rd Man on the phone, as the minimum direct 3rd Man cost is approximately two orders of magnitude greater than the minimum Actinic Payments cost.

If I've misunderstood the point please let me know.

Chris

[atco]

Now looking at Help pages to work it all out.

[cbarling]

Dave, I've edited the name of this thread from "No Faith in Actinic Payments Security" to "Questions about 3rd Man with Actinic Payments".

Obviously the security of Actinic Payments is pretty close to our hearts and as far as we are aware there are no issues with the security of Actinic Payments.

Chris

[Duncan Rounding]

It's interesting that The 3rd Man would apparently give differing 'scores' on the phone to that returned online.
I would be interested to hear what they said when questioned about this when you speak to them.

[cbarling]

The score that The 3rd Man gives electronically is based on generic rules across industries.

If you contract directly with The 3rd Man, they use the same data, but add on expertise about the industry sector. So buying electronics is generically more likely to be fraudulent than, for instance, buying nuts and bolts. That's at least one reason for differences.

This is why I would suggest that everyone augments the raw scores and reasons received from The 3rd Man with their own experience within their industry.

The other thing is that there is more you can do than just ship or not ship. You can investigate. For instance calling someone and asking about "the order" or giving their last name and asking for their first can flush out whether things are fraudulent - fraudsters often have many orders and names on the go at once.

Finally, if you are defrauded you can repoprt this to 3rd Man with a single click from within Actinic. I don't think anyone else has implemented this with The 3rd Man.

Chris

[leehack]

Perhaps at some stage 3rd man will ask for your industry sector then and get this disparity closed up, not having your online check as good as your telephone check is a little funny to hear about I must say. 'We don't fully help cos we don't know your sector' is something I'd certainly like to see eradicated and get the service even better.

Good tips on the name check, that's very useful.