Campaigns, Credit Card Fraud and AVS.
Posted in: Credit Card Fraud | Comments (0)
The issue we, as ecommerce professionals, is that the Obama campaign has chosen to disable tools that can help verify that the contributors to his campaign are who they say they are, and are legally allowed to contribute to his campaign. Why is this important? In the context of elections, where there are laws that govern who can contribute, and how much they can contribute, these anti-fraud tools can prevent campaigns from accepting contributions that exceed legal limits, or originate overseas. The McCain campaign has implemented these controls, but the Obama campaign still refuses to do so.
The concern is simple, without adequate checks, it is easy for an individual donor to circumvent campaign fundraising limit of $2300 by making dozens of contributions in the amount of $199 or less and using different names and addresses each time. Because the contributions are less than $200, they do not need to be reported to the FEC, so the public cannot independently verify the names and addresses of the donors.
An additional concern is that, without the proper checks, a donor from a foreign country can enter a phony US based address, and unlawfully contribute to the Obama campaign.
One tool that the Obama campaign should implement is AVS. What’s AVS? Here’s a snip from Wikipedia:
The Address Verification System (AVS) is a system used to verify the identity of the person claiming to own the credit card. The system will check the billing address of the credit card provided by the user with the address on file at the credit card company. The other security features for the credit card include the CVV2 number and the expiration date.
AVS verifies the numeric portions of a cardholders billing address. For example, if your address is 101 Main Street, Highland, CA 92346, AVS will check 101 and 92346. Sometimes AVS checks additional digits such as an apartment number, other times it does not. As a result you may receive false negatives from e-commerce verification systems, which may require manual overrides or reprogramming of the AVS entries by the card issuing bank.
Simply put, the AVS can verify that a donor, at a minimum, is making the contribution from a US based address, with a credit card issued in the US, and make it more difficult a single contributor to violate fundraising laws by using multiple addresses.
Unfortunately, the way the Obama campaign is handling their credit card transactions, AVS will not stop all fraudulent activity. For example, if a donor’s address was 123 Mockingbird Lane, Anytown 22001, that donor would would still be able to make unlawful contributions by using any phony address that started with “123” and used the zip code “22001”.
Right now, the only way we can make sure that the Obama campaign is not fraudulently accepting contributions though this federal election law loophole is to demand the Obama campaign release the details of these small contributions so we, the people, can verify that they are legal. Please sign our petition today!
John @ October 28, 2008
Sign the petition!
Posted in: Petition | Comments (2)
Obama claims to be a champion of more transparency in politics and government. In light of his claim and in light of the fact that both the McCain and Clinton campaigns have opened their donor databases, we immediately request that Obama does the same. If he has nothing to hide, he will be more than happy to share this information with the public.
Mike @ October 28, 2008
Obama Shrugs?
Posted in: Credit Card Fraud | Comments (4)
The authors of this blog are concerned internet professionals who have worked in and around e-commerce and internet marketing for over a decade. We’ve taken to writing this blog due to the media’s unwillingness to tackle what is potentially one of the largest cases of fundraising fraud in presidential campaign history. And since this is a topic near and dear to our hearts, we felt like this blog could help shine a bright light on the murky world of Obama’s online campaign fundraising machine.
Recently, it has become abundantly clear that the Obama campaign has deliberately made it easy for motivated Obama supporters to violate campaign finance law. The Obama campaign has for some reason intentionally deactivated basic credit card fraud filters on its website, thereby allowing contributors give donations with fake names and addresses. What this has done is essentially create a loophole for folks to circumvent federal election contribution limits (they can give more than $2,300 and nobody will ever know!). And it creates an added bonus: it is now much easier to give illegal foreign donations as well!
This is not just rumor-mongering. Several citizens have already tested the Obama campaign website by using purposely incorrect names and addresses. And the results are in…the Obama campaign has accepted these donations and the respective credit card accounts were charged. These fraudulent donations were accepted as a direct result of the Obama campaign deliberately turning off the basic fraud checks that are used to verify a credit cardholder’s address. It is almost unheard of for an online merchant to turn off these filters. Afterall, who wants to ship a product to the wrong address? Today, it remains unclear why the Obama camp turned these filters off.
What are the ramifications? Well, the Obama campaign can accept an almost unlimited amount of money from any contributor by allowing them to repeatedly use false names and addresses with the same credit card for any online credit card donations. This can also feasibly allow non-US citizens (who are legally prohibited from donating to any US political campaign) to donate to the Obama campaign by simply making up a United States address. Depressingly, there are few real legal mechanisms to prevent this as the FEC reporting requirements for donations under $200 are minimal and the law hasn’t caught up with regulating these donations online.
To be clear, there is not PROOF that the Obama campaign has received millions of dollars of unethical donations. But the Obama campaign’s complete disregard for the spirit of the law and the recent findings of donor fraud sure don’t look good.
Given the lazy and confusing reporting the mainstream press has so far offered the public, we feel a compelling need to stay on top of this issue until it is proven that the Obama campaign did not -and is not- systematically accepting fraudulent donations.
There’s a simple way for the Obama campaign to clear this matter up. All Obama has to do is simply release his campaign’s donor records (as have the McCain and Clinton campaigns). If he has nothing to hide, Obama should welcome the request. Obama talks about how we need more transparency in government, so let’s see him walk the talk.
Mike @ October 27, 2008
