Safe Sales, Safe Revenue Campaign

In support of a Europol campaign on consumer protection, An Garda Síochána wish to advise consumers and businesses to be careful when conducing business online.

The advice of GNECB and Europol is that businesses must work to protect their sales and revenues.

• Monitor transactions: to identify situations when your business was the victim of fraud, or liaise with business organisations to identify fraud trends – Take steps to avoid becoming a victim of fraud – if in doubt about a transaction, don’t go through with it – think twice!
• Know your product: is it a high value product – is it easy to re-sell – any history of product being attractive to fraudsters – identify risks associated with the product – talk to the customer about the product to test their knowledge of it
• Know your customer: identify their name, address, eircode – if the customer is another business, look it up – is there an address on their website, is the address genuine? – is their email or phone number genuine? – is their account held in a different country? – How do they wish to pay? – What address are they using for delivery?
• Implement safe means of payment: talk to your acquirer about safe means of payment – use 3d secure payment services – keep record of transactions for reference in the event of charge backs, have an efficient resolution process to deal with charge backs
• Use a professional and reliable delivery systems: check the delivery address – only allow re-routing to known customers – have signature to confirm delivery – if in doubt don’t deliver.
• Keep your data secure: have up to date IT systems including anti-virus software, ensure all data is securely backed up very regularly and that it is readily accessible if necessary – Be GDPR compliant.

Risks: Consider the risks to your business, work to mitigate identified risks, have a recovery plan, if concerned about a delivery, recall it – if concerned about a payment, recall it through your bank

Red Flags:

• Use of Gift cards to purchase high value products
• Unusual number of items being purchased by unfamiliar customer
• Customer lacks knowledge of the product being purchased
• Unusual method of payment
• Bank account held in different country to delivery address
• Excessive number of charge backs to a particular customer/address

For further information, including links to infographics, click here.