www.chest-net.com Goes Live!

Hello everyone! Casey Cosgrove here, C.O.O. of chest-net.com. I’m thrilled to announce that ChestNet Transactions (http://chest-net.com) is officially up and running. After years of development and testing we’re confident that ChestNet Transactions will eliminate online fraud as we know it. Our mission is to give both buyers and sellers the opportunity to send and receive money without the fear of being ripped off. We’ve tested the system on our own live classifieds for the past year with real buyers and sellers and have successfully prevented various forms of scams and blocked thieves world-wide in their tracks.

ChestNet Transactions was created because we were tired as buyers and sellers of not having a way to control our transactions. Other payment services and methods would take someones hard earned money and give it directly to the stranger without any way of checking if the transaction is legit. That’s why there’s over $183 million reported internet fraud to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). In 2005 according to a Gartner Group report, they found that only 1% of people actually report the fraud. 1%! How much is that other 99%? We estimate in the billions and it’s our job to make sure that number goes down.

At ChestNet Transactions, we feel it’s smarter to verify the buyer and their money on behalf of the seller and provide the buyer a way to approve the item before the seller receives the payment. So next time you win an auction on eBay or find a great deal on Craigslist, use ChestNet Transactions to pay and you can control the transaction.

Safe Buying and Selling everyone!

./Casey

The Birds and Bees of www.chest-net.com

The good and geeky folks at ChestNet Transactions receive a number of emails daily. The one that we answer the most from our community is “What does ‘ChestNet Transactions’ mean?” One thing for sure, we didn’t dip our spoon in a warm bowl of Alphabet Soup and pull out a tasty melody of “e” “a” “s” and “y” pasta letters. There’s actually a story behind the name. Come one now, that’s EASY!

Our co-founder, Peter Levshin, is from Australia. If you know anything about Australians, they love the game of cricket, surfing and using words almost as outrageous as the wildlife that inhabits their ‘island down under’. Peter is no exception. While describing cricket (or was it surfing) he used the world “bonza” in the sentence. “ChestNet Transactions” is Aussie slag for “rad”, “amazing” or “the best”. While some of us liked the idea of naming the site “eRad.com” it just didn’t work as well as ChestNet Transactions. Okay, so it’s not a rad story, but the name chest-net.com is pretty awesome.

Wild Wild West(ern) Union Thoughts

I just Googled “Western Union Fraud” and received over 14 million results. I’m curious to what percentage of Western Union’s business is related to fraud? Inquiring minds would love to know.

Three Strong Weeks

ChestNet Transactions has been live for almost three weeks and we’ve had zero fraudulent transactions. The ChestNet Transactions system has successfully protected thousands of dollars. Here’s a recent email from a thankful user, Mark in Irvine, CA:

“Thanks for the heads up. You saved me 1500 bucks!!”

Mark from Irvine, you were not alone. We’ll continue to do our part protecting transactions. Thank you and everyone for their emails.

Until next time, safe buying and selling everyone!

./Casey

Yahoo and Hotmail Enable Fraudsters

Yahoo and Hotmail Enable Fraudsters While analyzing the fraud catching fishing nets on ChestNet Transactions today I noticed that all the fraudsters have a striking similarity in their tactics; they all used free email services. Yahoo and Hotmail seem to be the preferred choice, but mail.com and AOL are not off the hook. Between the Big Four free email services they account for over 96% of the blocked email accounts on ChestNet Transactions this week. I would imagine that percentage is similar on most online sites. 

Should Yahoo, Hotmail and AOL be held accountable?

It’s hard to hold an email service accountable. Some might argue that they are equivalent to the getaway driver in the bank robbery but I consider them more of the car. Would you arrest the car markers at Ford Motors if an Explorer was used in a bank robbery? Absolutely not, so I don’t think holding Yahoo accountable is a solution. Would it work? Of course, but for the millions of honest free email users the punishment would be transferred to us good guys.

Should free email services do more to protect people from online fraud? 

Absolutely! They should take a page out of the books from some of the more fraud conscience websites and do simple address verifications (AVS). If a user registers and claims to be in Seattle, Washington but their IP address shows up in London, UK or even Washington D.C. for that matter, the new account should be denied. Bye bye, Western Union scams. See ya later scammers claiming to be in the US and located elsewhere. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out “Mr. Smith” who just inherited millions and wants to give me some of it if I give them the account to transfer the money too. AVS is a simple solution to the problem but only one of many that would need to be made to make free email services free of being an accomplice in online crimes. 

Without the free email services could fraudsters still easily attempt to swindle millions of dollars from Americans? 

Initially, no. You would get rid of a majority of the ‘fly by night’ fraudsters and leave the crimes only to the hardcore tech terrorists. There is still ways for the tech savvy to mask their location and take over a persons computer to avoid the AVS net, but for every tech savvy fraudster, there are a hundred more that don’t have the juice to make it happen.Like all crime, it evolves over time, but if the free email services such as Yahoo, Hotmail and AOL did more to protect all consumers and websites the crime wave would drop drastically. 

Buy and Sell Safely,

./Casey

World Cup of Fraudsters, Scammers and Filth of the World Score on Craigslist

“Goooooooooaaaaaal” rings loud across the world this month and we’re not talking about soccer. These are the united cheers of scammers, fraudsters and filth of the world who are taking advantage of World Cup ticket buyers online.

Starting June 9th, 2006 the good folks of ChestNet Transactions began receiving calls and emails from buyers looking for World Cup tickets on Craigslist who have been approached by scammers, fraudsters and the filth of the world. These scammers, fraudsters and filth of the world have been emailing Craigslist users saying that ChestNet Transactions has ‘verified’ them to sell World Cup tickets and it’s now safe to send the scammers, fraudsters and the filth of the world a Western Union money order to an address in either Italy or the UK. Red flag! Red flag! Red flag! (We’ll get to Western Union below. )

ChestNet Transactions secures money for both the buyer and seller within ChestNet Transactions, not outside of the ChestNet Transactions payment protection system. If the buyer puts money in their ChestNet Transactions account, there is no way a seller can steal a single penny, pence or yen from them. These fraudsters, scammers and filth of the world were trying to dupe the good soccer fans from Craigs’ into sending unsecured money orders to them for nonexistent tickets. Lucky for a few of the buyers they smelled something fishy and didn’t fall for the scammer, fraudster and filth of the world’s trick and immediately reported them to ChestNet Transactions.

For every report we received, we’d post a warning in the Craigslist city. To date, we’ve posted in over 20 cities where we’ve identified scammers, fraudsters and the filth of the world. We noticed that Craigslist took down most if not all of our posts warning buyers of the scams but we were able to still able to find the scammers posts listed on Craigslist. Looks like another “Goooooooooaaaaaal” for scammers, fraudsters, and the filth of the world as Craigslist has scored on it’s own goal and taken down the wrong ads.

Wild Wild West(ern) Union
ChestNet Transactions has reported each and every case of fraud that’s been reported to us from buyers on Craigslist to Wild Wild West(ern Union) to prevent the scammers from collecting payment, but we’re sad to learn that Wild Wild West(ern Union) could quote, “Do nothing about it. Once the payment is sent, the fraudster can pick up the payment just by giving the senders name, address, amount and their own first name”. I loved how the rep on the phone admitted that it was a fraudster collecting payment, yet they wouldn’t stop it. I guess without the fraudsters, Wild Wild West(ern Union) would lose their biggest clients. You do the math!

Speaking of “math”, ChestNet Transactions is still free to buyers and inexpensive for sellers and we plan on keeping it that way.

Until next time, safe buying and selling everyone!

./Casey

ChestNet Transactions First Week = In the News, News and More News

Ironic News? We think not! We’re in the middle of our first week and the response from the media has been extremely good. For an example, we had a local piece on KCAL CBS 9 in Los Angeles this week. Alan Mendelson surprised us the day after we launched. You can follow this link to see the clip: http://cbs2.com/video?cid=95 and click on the June 7th video.

Ironically, two days later KCAL 9 did another story on eBay auction fraud. Ironic? We think not. Not that eBay is a fraud-for-all. The good folks at eBay do their best to stop fraud but there’s obviously a lot slipping through the cracks. In the story, a seller is trying to auction off a fake Mickey Mantle autographed #7 baseball. If the ‘winner’ of that eBay auction used ChestNet Transactions to pay for the item, they would have had nothing to worry about. With ChestNet Transactions free buyer payment protection they would have had up to 7 days to authenticate the baseball before the seller runs off with their money. Luckily for the highest bidder, eBay pulled the auction before it was too late. With ChestNet Transactions, we feel luck as nothing to do with “it”.

Where’s Waldo? Every office has their little inside jokes and the good and geeky folks at ChestNet Transactions are no different. We have a lime green cookie jar bear that constantly gets placed in random places in people’s offices. Some days you’ll sit down at your desk and open your desk drawer and there it is, Mr. Freaky Green Bear.

The day Alan came in to interview our fearless leader, David Gantert, was also the day that Mr. Freaky Green Bear was hidden in Dave’s office. Timing is everything! What great timing and a perfect cameo for Mr. Freaky Green Bear. Hint: You’ll see it over Alan’s shoulder during the interview.

More News. One of the other news stories that broke this week was from a writer, Leonard Fischer of Gannett News. I religiously check out the Thursday column “Hot Sites” to see what is new and it was an honor to see we made the cut in our first week. Here’s a blurb of what he had to say:

“If you buy or sell a lot of stuff on sites such as eBay, you want to protect yourself from fraud, including items that never show up in the mail or aren’t quite what you bargained for. This new online payment system can help. It’s free for buyers and inexpensive for sellers.”

Until next time, safe buying and selling everyone!

./Casey