Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Prevent Fraud

By Albert Conner

The onset of such sophisticated technology has changed the way we interact and do business. Most transactions take place over the internet through laptops or PDA's. Being able to pay for anything anywhere can be a great enhancement to our society, but we must be careful with what information we put out into cyberspace.

But how many times have you had to give you address to an agent to complete a transaction? If you do a lot of business by phone or Internet, you will have probably run into this many, many times. It can get a little annoying to us from time to time, especially when we know they already have the information. This is a type of address verification.

Just to clarify, we must not be annoyed if the agent is doing address verification on transactions. This is a very important task and is considered a standard operating procedure in terms of money matters.

Why is address verification so important? It seems at first that someone wouldn't be able to do much with just an address as far as getting important information, but with a current address phone numbers and bills can be accessed.

In order to verify your address, an agent must receive from you at the time of your transaction your address. They then check it against the address given in previous transactions. If it doesn't match up they will not allow the transaction.

As part of the address verification system companies will use the USPS address verification database to compare entries. The United States Postal Service address verification system is a reliable tool that they can use to check for a current address, or whether or not the address exists at all. It will also give them a chance to report fraudulent use.

The second reason is that they want to have a smooth and good relationship with the client. If you found out that you have an unauthorized transaction on your credit card bill, I'm sure you will contact the company and complain because they allowed this unauthorized and unverified use of the credit card. Thus leading to a discontinuation of business. With the verification system, you are sure that only you and the authorized people can do the transaction.

In short, using address verification will decrease the number of complaints and increase your level of customer service so your business can thrive.

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