Spammers get their just deserts...

From the Register:
Carders scam spammers


Fraudsters who deal in stolen credit card data have devised a means to extract money from sponsors of junk mail campaigns.

Carders have signed up as affiliates to spam campaigns, but instead of sending out junk mail themselves they are using stolen credit card data to make purchases from the sponsors of spam campaigns, such as online pharmacies.

The carders earn a cut of these sales of anything between 40 to 50 per cent, the Washington Post's security blog reports, more than enough to make the scam viable.

But the sponsors of spam campaigns end up losing out because of charge backs generated when fraudulent purchases are identified. Higher incidents of charge-backs result in higher merchant fees while drawing the attention of banks and credit cards sponsors to dubious businesses. Far from benefiting from increased sales, spam sponsors end up losing out. In this way, card fraudsters are scamming the backers of spam.



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