Humble Bundle shares how to stop online fraud

Humble Bundle has released a post about its efforts to stop fraud purchases. This update was released to relieve the frequent and new Humble Bundle buyers. Humble Bundle has confirmed that cases of fraud have already been detected and prevented.

Humble Bundle said in a statement, "With over a million sales of great games in a typical month, Humble Bundle is an enticing target for fraudsters out to make a quick buck. The most common approach is to buy as many keys as possible using a stolen credit card, and then resell them elsewhere for a profit."

Humble Bundle boasts a six-step anti-fraud method that was claimed to be effectively working. According to the company, “We’ve seen fraud go up and down, but overall, it’s a tiny fraction of all the transactions that we process at Humble Bundle.”

The method’s steps are: risk assessment, SMS verification, manual review, rate limit and captcha, key cancellation and method assessment.

An anti-abuse start called Sift Science was chosen for the company’s first line of defence. The program is machine learning-based that uses information from all the customers and transactions done.

The database is used by the program to pinpoint users that are attempting fraudulent purchases. Humble Bundle mentioned to have used the program to analyse 55,000,000 transactions across multiple years.

The use of SMS verification was stressed by Humble Bundle. The company acknowledges that it may inconvenience customers but the payoff for both sides is worth it. The method helps Humble Bundle track and confirm legit customers while banning fraudsters by phone numbers.

This increases the cost per attempt by the fraudsters while it builds up database compiling legit customers. The verification is also used to confirm transactions when the before mentioned program finds a transaction dubious.

If a transaction remains questionable, it is held onto for manual review. The customer service team inspects at the transaction and crosschecks it with the customer history. “If they’re on the fence, we generally approve because the only thing worse than fraudsters is blocking legitimate customers from getting their game,” the company said.

Rate limiting and captcha are used to minimise the damage. This limits the fraudster from stealing more than two copies of a game. This reduces the damage and amount of money refunded to the victim. Humble Bundle features the latest of Google’s captcha.

Humble Bundle also states that they are diligent in cancelling fraudulent orders. The keys are sent back to the developer and or publishers and the owners who used the keys will lose access to the game.

Humble Bundle continues to observer and improve its process as fraudsters are persistent in finding new holes in the system. The company states that a great relationship with the payment processors, Paypal and Stripe, is required to diagnose, fix and improve the system together.