Fraud's Latest Target: The Campaign Trail
Boise, Idaho (PRWEB) March 17, 2016 -- As the U.S. political campaign trail heats up, Kount, a leading supplier of fraud protection and sales boosting technology, has warned that political donations have become a new testing ground favorite for fraudsters. To protect these organizations and monitor a new breed of fraud threats, Kount has partnered with agencies working with nonprofits, advocacy groups and political campaigns mobilizing communities to strengthen fraud protection in these vulnerable channels and prevent donor fraud.
Given the influx of donations that happen during election season, fraudsters have exploited this time by making political or charitable contributions to assess the validity of stolen credit card information, which they will then use to commit more fraud. This can leave organizations not only with fraudulent contributions, but also hefty chargeback fines and paperwork. Kount collaborates with organizations to separate genuine contributions from the counterfeit in order to safeguard organizations and their legitimate supporters.
“Fraudsters are always looking to find vulnerabilities among merchants, consumers, and payment processors and with the campaign race in full swing, political groups and non-profit organizations are seeing an increasing stream of contributions coming in,” said Don Bush, Vice President of Marketing, Kount. “But in the past, organizations like these didn’t really need to think about fraud in the same way as big retailers or vendors would – which has made them a prime target for the enterprising fraudster, and highly susceptible to attacks.”
In addition to their heightened vulnerability to fraud threats, should political groups or non-profit organizations find themselves victim of an attack, they risk severe damage to their cause or campaign, which could heavily detract from their efforts or achievements. The expenses accrued after suffering fraud attacks, from reviewing fraud victims and fraudulent activity, to increased chargeback fees from banks and tedious reporting, can be doubly damaging to smaller political groups and non-profits.
“What this new type of fraud has really shown us is that fraud can happen anywhere, regardless of the nature of the organization or size,” continued Bush. “Fraudsters are just as likely to exploit smaller organizations for practices such as carding, or card-testing, where they will use the contribution form to test the validity of a large number of stolen credit cards by submitting a high volume of forms, thus determining which cards are approved and valid, and leaving the small political group or non-profit with a whole host of damaging consequences.”
The stakes – and contributions – will only get higher as candidates garner as much backing as possible right up until ballots are cast in November. Kount is able to supplement merchant services with existing fraud preventions to safeguard the donations being made as well as the groups or charities they are supporting.
About Kount
Kount helps businesses boost sales by reducing fraud. Our all-in-one, SaaS platform simplifies fraud detection and helps online businesses accept more orders. Kount’s turnkey fraud platform is easy-to-implement and easy-to-use. Kount’s proprietary technology has reviewed hundreds of millions of transactions and provides maximum protection for some of the world’s best-known brands. Merchants using Kount can accept more orders from more people in more places than ever before. For more information about Kount, please visit http://www.kount.com.
Nikki Neumann, Dotted Line Communications, +1 (518) 669-6455, [email protected]
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