What happens when the people who are supposed to protect you from identity theft mess up
June 17, 2019
What Else is as Thick as a Credit Card?
July 2, 2019
Do you have a website domain? Help to prevent credit card theft by keeping your domains renewed.
Do you know what one of the easiest ways to stop credit card theft is? If you have a website you have the power to take a bit out of this crime. We know what you are thinking and it is not quite that. It is actually very simple. Keep your website domain registration up to date.
Your Domain?
If you have a website you have a domain. You may have more of them. JLE has a domain, its jleconsultants.com. Typically these domains need to be renewed yearly but the good thing is that it usually does not cost much money. Too many people though either forget about it or neglect it.
So what happens if a domain is not renewed? If it is not renewed anyone can purchase the domain and your website is eliminated. Obviously for anyone who is selling their wares online or through an e-commerce system this would be devastating. Not only would you not be able to get the domain back you would also have to rebuild the site and rebrand all of your stationary with the new site. This is not a cheap proposition, certainly more than the cost of renewing the domain.
What Does This Have To Do With Credit Card Theft?
But what does this have to do with credit card theft? A lot. As reported by Cyber Security expert Brian Krebs this is becoming one of the fastest forms of credit card theft. What happens is that someone scoops up an unrenewed domain and creates a fake ecommerce site selling something at dirt cheap prices. People expecting to find the old site visit the site and find deals too good to be true and purchase something. Not only do they never get the product but they gave a thief all of their credit card information.
A Real Life Example
A photographer in Oregon found this out the hard way. The photographer had a website up for ten years but forgot to renew the domain. They had an automatic renewal but the credit card it was tied to had expired and it was not updated with the domain registrar. After the domain expired someone purchased it and set up a believable-looking ecommerce site selling Reebok shoes at bargain prices, albeit in Spanish.
The photographer did not realize this had happened until they tried to log into their Instagram account, which was linked to an email account associated with the domain. When they tried to reset the password it was found that the Instagram account was now associated with a Russian email address. The photographer’s business was wiped out.
Don’t Let This Be You
Hundreds of websites are falling victim to this. Over 800 of these skimming sites have been discovered since June of 2018. It seems to be the latest effort at card-not present theft since the EMV chips do nothing to prevent this. Now a thief has the credit card information and can begin making purchases online or sell the information on the dark web. And the worst part is that all of this could have been prevented by just renewing a domain.
Now sometimes a domain does need to be done away with. The best thing anyone can do is to either sell it to someone or see if someone will take it from you. Whatever you do do not let your domain registration expire and if you do make sure that your customers know not to go to that domain. It could wind up costing you and your customers you much more than you can afford and you could wind up helping credit card thieves.
