Accept orders from free email accounts?

[coffee]

so im setting up my plimus account and theres an option:

"Accept orders from free domains such as hotmail.com yahoo.com ( A recent FBI study of online fraud found that 97.3 percent of fraudulent orders submitted e-mail addresses originating from a free e-mail service )"

I realy not sure what to do, not every 1 with a FREE email account are crooks, should I allow them? any of you have any problem with FREE email domains?
:)

[Tertsi]

Accept them or lose money.

[tolworthy]

I suppose it depends on the costs involved. I hate to admit it, but I am a fan of Hotmail. I have used Hotmail as my main account for the last nine years, it has never given me any trouble - it's fast and efficient. In contrast, the email addresses provided by my ISPs over the years have been less reliable and awkward to use. So although fraudsters like it, so do many others.

I don't know much about Plimus - are they suggesting that they let people have your products based only on the fact that they have an email address?

[Sybixsus]

I don't know much about Plimus - are they suggesting that they let people have your products based only on the fact that they have an email address?

No, they're suggesting they will automatically decline anyone who tries to buy with a free email address, forcing them to use another email address or decide not to buy after all.

Doesn't make any difference to me, since hardly any of my customers ever uses a free email address to buy. It's worth thinking carefully about though, because for all the benefits I've had from Plimus since moving from ShareIt, I've had a lot more fraud with them. Not a huge amount, but not insignificant either. They just don't come from free email addresses, lol, so there's nothing I can do to prevent it. ( And no, I couldn't ban countries by IP either because most of the fraudulent orders are from within the US, not in Africa and Asia or Eastern Europe )

[soniCron]

Now with temporary email addresses, like Temporaryinbox (http://www.temporaryinbox.com/) which offer a variety of always changing domains (http://www.temporaryinbox.com/temporaryinbox.php#domains), it is - in my opinion - a pointless endeavor. I can't think of a single fraudulent order that came from a free email address...

[Sybixsus]

Ah, I'd never heard of that. That would certainly explain why my fraudulent orders are not coming from classic free email providers then.

[Frozen In Ice]

I haven't had any problems. Then again, my ecommerce partner does extra checking to assure the order is legit when coming from a free email account.

[coffee]

Thanks guys, interesting reading sounds like its ok to accept them. :D

[Shaz]

How do you know that 97.3% of ALL email doesn't come from free email services? Maybe 98% of LEGITIMATE orders come from free email services too! I know a lot of people who prefer to use those because they don't have to change their email address when they change ISPs. I wouldn't be making a decision based on such sparse information - would want to see where they're getting their numbers from, and what other things they've discovered first.

[James C. Smith]

97.3 percent of fraudulent orders submitted e-mail addresses originating from a free e-mail service


97.3% of all fraudulent orders were placed by people who had consumed bread within the last 4 weeks.

That doesn’t prove anything.

You should read this topic: Regnow blocks Hotmail & yahoo (http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=3986)

In there I state that “find it ridicules to block orders simply because the e-mail address is a free account” and go on to post some data from Reflexive such as over 30% of orders come from free mail account and Brian Fisher confirms similar number form Arcade Town.

[amaranth]

I would allow free email accounts. About half of my orders come from them and I've never had a problem. When I first started selling my game, I was completely over-protective... so over-protective that it made purchasing and unlocking the game too much of a pain for many people to bother with it.

[LilGames]

I exclusively use "free" email addresses when doing any online activity. Just as sellers may fear fraud, customers fear being put on spam lists, etc, etc.

[destron]

I would say accept, but be aware of messages from obvious tricksters.
I use gmail (one such free service) for my email, and my friends, who, in my opinion, are respectable, use it too.

Accept them or lose money.
^ Words of wisdom. ^

[BarrySlisk]

No, they're suggesting they will automatically decline anyone who tries to buy with a free email address, forcing them to use another email address or decide not to buy after all.

But if they don't use the email for verification, then what's the problem? How is it possible to cheat? Using stolen creditcards?

[DangerCode]

I haven't had any problems. Then again, my ecommerce partner does extra checking to assure the order is legit when coming from a free email account.

May I ask who you use?

[IBAudio]

Hi Coffee,

I am new to your forum but hopefully can offer you some advice here.

I run an ecommerce site selling music and this is something that you have to accept as part of selling online. I don't have the exact percentage but I would guess that a fairly high percentage (maybe 30%) of our customers use free email accounts.

I think Lilgames has hit the reason on the head which is the person buying may well use a free account for online purchases to avoid spamming. they can just close that account down and move on if they start to receive too much.

If they are crooks then they will have a dodgy card as well which is where the fraud detection really takes place and if they are determined enough they will get what they want anyway.

Yeah 97% of the fraudsters use free accounts but then that's always going to be that case but I bet the percentage that you get is very low. I think we've probably had 1 in last 2 years and that was stopped by the card fraud detection system so it's definitely worth accepting free accounts.

Hope that helps!

[soniCron]

Think about it another way: 100% of fradulent orders come from credit cards. Should you stop accepting credit cards? ;)