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Credit card profiles stolen, major data security breach at Wyndhams, Merchants Beware!

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts in the United States have reported a serious breach in the data storage system of the company, hackers managed to steal thousands of customer’s credit card numbers from the secure computer systems of the company.

This happened at one of Wyndhams franchisee in July or August of 2008, the computer system of that company was linked with the main server used by Wyndhams; as a result the intruder could hack and access the credit card information of many of its customers.

The company sources are saying that computer systems of 41 Wyndham Hotels and Resorts were victims of this hacking, and credit card numbers of 21,000 customers from Florida were stolen, apart from the data theft of customers from other regions.

There is a thriving underground trade in re-selling the stolen credit card numbers, each stolen credit card number fetching $2 to $3, and if accompanied with full profile, such as mother’s maiden name, date of birth, social security number and possibly an ATM PIN, the hacker can earn roughly around $10 for the steal.

The easy accessibility of stolen credit card profiles in the grey market is proving to be a nightmare for all merchants, especially for card-not-present transactions on the internet, annually billions and billions of dollars are being lost due to credit card frauds.

Just how to prevent the credit card fraud from happening?
A million dollar question awaiting a yet-to-be found solution, security advisors to merchant web sites online have devised a credit card fraud prevention mechanism that is providing an effective shield, which is successful nine out of ten times.

How does this shield work? – As soon as a customer enters his credit card information on a merchant’s web-site, an automated process online forwards the information to the security-provider who has access to a comprehensive data base which has minute-by-minute updated information on all fraudulent Credit Cards in circulation world wide.

There is other multiple security checks provided by the agency in a short period of time, which help in analyzing if the credit card is genuine or not, accordingly the transaction is flagged, declined or approved, a report that is generated is forwarded to the merchant for further processing.

The enhanced security check has saved merchants prevent multi dimensional credit card frauds and possible charge backs by credit card companies. Prevention is better than cure, Merchant Risk Management Service is a preferred option for preventing online credit card fraud.

About the Author

Jessica Miller, Marketing head in Merchantrms inc, the company which has developed fraud protection technology and software based solution which helps to prevent the credit card fraud and reduce chargebacks for companies engaged in ecommerce

Hackers Steal Millions of Credit Card Numbers – FrugalTech