Take Charge Business Consulting, LLC

                     Delivering Significant and Measurable Results

Warnings for Merchants

M Know your customer!  Do not be fooled by a caller or email asking you to ship larger than normal quantities of merchandise.  Make sure you take the proper precautions.  We are seeing fraudsters use email (usually with broken English) or the hearing impaired system to disguise accents.  They usually have multiple credit cards.  BEWARE...you are usually shipping out of the country or to a reshipping location which will ship your merchandise out of the country.  You are responsible for your chargebacks, so do not get taken by this scam!

M Keep your business safe from Business ID Theft!  We are seeing tons of ID Theft on businesses.  Most states put your business information and ownership information online.  Once they have your name and address, a Social Security number is very easy to obtain on the internet.  If you are a business owner, you should consider putting consumer statements on all of your credit reports stating to call you at a specific number and verify key information on your credit report prior to extending credit.

M Keep your terminal & POS systems safe!  We are seeing more data compromises on terminals and POS systems than we are for internet merchants.  You need to be PCI compliant, but you need to be especially concerned if...

1.  Your terminal is on a digital phone line (like Comcast or Vontage).  Older dial terminals do not encrypt card numbers.  If you are using digital phone service, you are sending credit card numbers over the internet.

2.  You are on a POS system connected to the internet.  Many POS systems are not updated on a regular basis.  If you are on Digital Dining, Aloha, Micros, or a similar application, you need to make sure the version you are using is up to date.

3.  You have any remote access software installed (software which allows you to access your business system from home).  Most of these remote access software packages have serious vulnerabilities.  You may be allowing a hacker to access your credit card information if you or the person who installed the equipment put anything like this on your computer. 

Be sure to contact a scan vendor like SecurityMetrics for help!

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Last modified: 06/26/09