Fraud Center Network—An unregulated consumer-reporting agency?

I recently received a complaint from a consumer about the Fraud Center. He told me that he had a problem with a company he was dealing with not performing as promised, so he reported it to PayPal and it reversed the charge. In response, the company reported him to the Fraud Center, which as promised, essentially blacklisted him.

The Fraud Center’s website states: Make Sure You Get Paid. When you add a record to the Fraud Center Network database, the system will send an email out to the persons email address in the record. The person can then visit the Fraud Center Network website to learn how dispute or remove themselves from the system. In 99% of all cases, people who have received notice has worked with the provider and the Fraud Center Network staff to resolve the issues.

According to the person who contacted me, the only way to work things out and resolve the dispute it to pay. Fraud Alert will not remove the entry unless directed to do so by the person who filed it. The information is also available to subscribes to the Fraud Alert, regardless of its accuracy. To me, this looks a lot like a credit-reporting agency, and it should be subject to the Fair Credit Reporting Act. There also seems to be real privacy problems. According to the person who contacted me, his private information has been made public on this website, with little concern for security.

I must note that I have not been able to verify anything I have been told, beyond reviewing the Fraud Center website. I tried to register for the company’s services but do not qualify. If others know more about this, please add a comment.

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[Baarr Suvo]

Institutions also are more likely to fall victim to social engineering schemes that target branch and call center staff as they undergo conversions linked to acquisitions. "Any time there is a change event, like an acquisition, there is opportunity for a fraudster to exploit a weakness," Speare says.
For M&T, the change event that proved fortuitous for fraudsters came in May 2011, when M&T acquired Wilmington Trust Corp. "We did not see anything significant, but we did see an uptick," Speare says. "You have acquired customers being migrated over, usually over a weekend, and the bad guys know that's going to occur. So they will attempt to hit you on the day that conversion is going on. There is a website which give you the information about your plan, here it is http://callnotes.org"
Fraudsters call in to have an account opened or some credential changed, knowing call-center staff won't be able to fully verify all the details until a few days after the conversion is complete. "The employee is trying to be helpful, so they sometimes end up giving out information they shouldn't or they set up accounts or make changes based on information provided by those who are not the actual accountholders," Speare says.