Experian and CardCops.com join forces to fight credit card fraud
Contacts:
Susan Henson
Experian
714 830 5129
susan.henson@experian.com
Dan Clements
CardCops
310 456 7796 Ext. 330
Dan@CardCops.com
Companies provide integrated solution to help card issuers track compromised credit cards via the Internet
Costa Mesa, Calif. and Malibu, Calif., March 3, 2003 – Experian®, a global business solutions company, and CardCops.com, a Web-based organization that monitors the Internet for compromised credit cards, have formed an alliance to help credit card issuers combat fraud. The theft of credit card information costs the American economy an estimated $1 billion yearly, according to Gartner analysts.
The new fraud detection resource will be offered exclusively through Experian to financial institutions that grant credit cards or process online credit card transactions. Using CardCop’s proprietary technology, the Internet will be monitored daily by CardCops to detect whether any credit cards issued by participating Experian clients appear to have been compromised. As cards are detected in the daily search, the information will be deposited in secure FTP (File Transfer Protocol) sites established for each credit card issuer enabling them to monitor usage to determine if the cards have been stolen. Credit card grantors will then determine the appropriate course of action.
"The ultimate goal of this collaboration is to protect consumers from identity theft by providing a fast, early alert that their credit card number may have been stolen off the Internet," said Lyn Porter, Experian’s vice president of Fraud Solutions. "The faster stolen credit cards are shut down, the less financial damage to consumers, merchants and card issuers. The free flow of Internet commerce depends on consumers feeling safe and secure using their credit card for online transactions."
CardCops.com’s proprietary technology includes a wide-reaching Web crawler that identifies card numbers that pass through suspicious public domains, such as high-risk Internet chat rooms, including multi-user Internet relay chat rooms, where online thieves often operate. CardCops ensures that the privacy of individual cardholders is upheld by not allowing any personally identifiable information to be carried in its database.
"We are pleased to join Experian in its groundbreaking efforts to defeat the fraudsters who use the Internet to prey on unsuspecting consumers," said Dan Clements, chief executive officer of CardCops.com. "We are confident that this alliance will ultimately reduce the incidence of identity theft for all consumers."
"As a recognized leader in the field of fraud prevention, we are determined to provide a total fraud prevention solution for our clients," said Porter. "We’re putting fraud perpetrators on notice that they cannot count on the anonymity of the Internet to avoid detection."
About Experian
Experian® provides strategic support to organizations around the world. It helps its clients target, acquire, manage and develop profitable customer relationships. It does this by combining its advanced decision support and outsourcing services with information on consumers, businesses, motor vehicles and property. Experian works with more than 40,000 clients across diverse industries, including financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, insurance, retail and catalogue, automotive, manufacturing, leisure, utilities, property, e-commerce and government. Millions of consumers rely on Experian`s consumer credit services to meet their financial management needs. Experian is a subsidiary of GUS plc and has headquarters in Nottingham, UK, and Costa Mesa, California. It has a 175-year history and unbroken sales growth over the past 22 years. Its 13,000 people support clients in more than sixty countries. Annual sales exceed $1.5 billion.
For more information, visit the company`s Web site at www.experian.com.
About CardCops.com
Headquartered in Malibu, Calif., CardCops.com is a global "think tank" that uses various resources to help consumers and online merchants fight credit card fraud. In addition to having a real-time database of credit cards collected from public areas of the Internet, their site also provides consumer tips, merchant tools, and educational information to help deter and detect online credit card fraud.
For more information, visit www.CardCops.com.
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