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It has been reported that thieves are using campaign websites to test if the credit card is valid or not.

Stolen credit card numbers are bought and sold in batches and the buyers want to make sure the cards are usable before paying for them, so they pick a few numbers out of the batch to test at charity and campaign websites.

A man Charles Bridges told that his American Express credit card was used to donate $103.90 to the Obama For America campaign. He came to know about this when he got monthly statement.

He said:

I have never made or authorized in any way a donation to this organization. We’ve all heard of dirty politics but using people’s credit card numbers to make donations was a new low.

He called the Obama campaign and talked to Reid Cherlin, a spokesman for Obama for America ‘08. According to Cherlin:

It was not something that was initiated by the campaign. If an unauthorized charge appears, he said people should contact their credit card companies and to have it credited back.

Users can also submit their complaint to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) although it is the standing policy of the FTC not to investigate reports where the value of fraud does not exceed $2000.

The cost of credit card fraud reaches into billions of dollars annually. In 2006, fraud in the United Kingdom alone was estimated at £428 million,or US$750-830 million at prevailing 2006 exchange rates.

Ben Greenbaum, a senior research manager for the Internet security firm Symantec was of the view that it’s a common practice among the underground economy. There is a growing criminal enterprise in which stolen credit card numbers are used to make online donations to political campaigns and charities.

Credit card companies have mechanisms in place that detects unusual activity. For example if the crooks were to make a purchase in a city where the cardholder doesn’t live or have online goods shipped to a different address, the credit card company’s fraud detection system would trigger.

Because donation to a charity or political campaign doesn’t get scrutinized in the same way crooks have found that making online donations is an easy way to verify that the stolen credit card numbers they are buying or selling are valid.