Will your purchase come to your door?

[img_assist|nid=8164|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=78|height=100] It is now much easier for fraudsters to commit their criminal acts. Resorting to their numerous wiles they manage to deceive the equipment used by most e-retailers to verify the identity of cardholders so as to steal goods from the stores.

A foible with the address verification system (AVS) exploited by credit card companies and banks in a payment verification process when monitoring transactions for a retailer was detected by UK fraud protection specialists The 3rd Man.

The work principle of AVS which is very popular with online entities is as follows. It checks the billing address of the credit card with the one on file, matching the house number and postcode for each card issued.

Violators are finding alternative addresses that have the same house number and digits in a different post code, making AVS to think it is the same place.

As the compromised cards and address details belong to real people swindlers are in the firm confidence that the retailer has no realistic way of verifying the information thus shipping the goods right to the criminal's door as noted by The 3rd Man.

"This is a serious problem, one that fraudsters have not only cottoned onto but are exploiting in significant volume.

Retailers relying on AVS, or where a retailer will only deliver to the billing address, are facing a potentially huge risk," says Andrew Goodwill, director, the 3rd Man.