Happy Holidays! This is the time of year where many small organizations raise money by holding concerts, giving special tours, and organizing special events. However, many of these organizations do not have professional web site designers, nor do they have the same kinds of payment security needed in an internet filled with scammers and hackers.
Last night, my partner decided to buy tickets for 2 choral concerts and a museum visit on their web sites. Her actions resulted in getting triple billed by one choral society, properly billed by the museum, and no bill at all from the other choral society. Without the ability to contact anyone related to the triple charge, she will need to dispute the triple charge with her credit card company.
This led me to think: How many of these small sites can be easily hacked, and money stolen from credit card users? I'm pretty sure that few of these sites are contracting out to firms like Speedpay to handle their credit card processing. (Speedpay is mostly used by larger firms, such as a foreign car manufacturer.) However, I'm less certain that they are not working with other firms whose specialty is handling small business transactions.
With all of the risks of doing business online, I find it amazing that we do so many online transactions. I do business with many small businesses, and have been lucky enough not to have gotten burnt by scammers (or not noticing a minor scalding.) Yet, I try to research new sites before doing any business with them. Often, I wait to hear that a friend has successfully done business with a firm before doing business with it myself. Even then, I still have a degree of risk I have to deal with.
The other day, I learned about 2 potential cruisers who got scammed by a fake travel site advertised on Facebook. They were told to pay for their cruise using the Cash.App application. To me, this would have been the first clue that the travel site is a scam. Not for these 2 people. They ended up going to the pier, ready to board the ship, and then they found out that they were scammed. OUCH!
In the end, one has to use both common sense and skepticism when paying for things on the internet. If we'd do just a little more than we do now, many of these scammers might go elsewhere.
