24/06/08. Payment Processors Dirty Tricks Campaign

I decided to dedicate my whole article to payment processors today as all the major news stories were connected to them in some way anyway. For instance, LibertyReserve site today showed just a simple page which indicated: “Authenticate with Login and Password!” Of course, you shouldn’t have entered this sensible information here as obviously that page was not from LibertyReserve site. It appeared that all the LibertyReserve pages you were entering in your browser were being automatically redirected to the other IP-address: http://194.8.75.240/auth.asp instead of current LibertyReserve IP http://85.17.211.137 . At the same time SCI and API worked perfectly and you could make and receive payments but just couldn’t have access to the main page. So it became obvious that somebody had a successful attempt in obtaining the members’ passwords in LR. You can imagine what can be done with this kind of info. So if you made a successful log-in attempt using this strange page you’re advised to change your password in your LR account as soon as possible.

Now the situation has been rectified by LR staff and the site seems to be back to normal. But what surprised me most in this case was the reaction of a LibertyReserve staff member that according to one member was very surprised by this phishing page and said that she would pass it over to the security department. So if you look at this situation from another angle: the phishing page was there for several hours and nobody even bothered from LR side to make an announcement on their blog. Was it a hacking attempt? Certainly, then we can draw the conclusion that LibertyReserve didn’t pass the test for the security as the reaction was one of surprise and they were both unaware of the problem and too slow to fix it. I wonder if somebody monitors the site’s security features properly. No offense to LR; just some thoughts to think over.

Regarding all these LR hacking issues there was one post on the forums that caught my eye as well. If you compare the IPs of the redirecting page with phishing authentication form and the IP of PerfectMoney payment processor you will see that they are very similar. http://194.8.75.240 – phishing page and http://194.8.74.156 – PerfectMoney IP address. Of course, there’s a difference but the similarity is there to be seen with your own eyes.

Speaking about PerfectMoney. If you’re a regular reader of my blog you should remember what PerfectMoney representative Andrew Draper said about AlterGold in my interview with him published here: “I haven’t heard about AlterGold but I checked it and found out that it is not a competitor for us at all. To build a modern, fast and reliable payment system in the internet is not as easy as just to rent 2 coders and to ask them to code in your garage while the parents are away. Nowadays you need to build a big structure of IT, hardware, financial, support and accounting departments.”

A reaction from AlterGold support didn’t take long. I received this email from them: “We read a recent interview posted on your blog with “PerfectMoney” but sincerely we didn’t like their comments about AlterGold. I am sure you must have seen our official blog (announced yesterday). We did make a response to their negative attitude in a professional manner.” Well, I want to be unbiased so I would like to “copy-paste” the direct reply from AlterGold‘s blog regarding PerfectMoney with my comments in between the lines:

“There is a new payment processor recently launched called PerfectMoney but that isn’t as perfect as AlterGold. I didn’t want to comment but I had to after reading their interview. I couldn’t find enough time to look at their website but I did read an interview with famous Money-News-Online.com/Blog. Actually a Payment processor based on ideology of AlterGold was trying to tell some about AlterGold which I really didn’t appreciate. First I thought it’s probably from Russia then I was happy to find a “Swiss” payment processor coming but I was shocked to read that they are operating from Switzerland but are registered in Panama instead of Swiitzweland. But I am still wondering if they are from Switzerland, their phone lines are redirected to Russia and I am sure you will be speaking with one who speaks English with a Russian accent. I really recommend them to change their banners and put correct information, no offence please. I would like say “Good luck” to PerfectMoney but AlterGold has no intention of doing any kind of business with PerfectMoney as we have seen what has happened before with several other payment processors, New ones come and go, But AlterGold has proved it self already!”

First of all, I had to admit that I corrected some mistakes made in this post. I mean no offence to the author of these lines but why speaking English with a Russian accent is a sin, I can’t understand. It’s obvious that the author is not a native English speaker either but I don’t mind. It can be that PerfectMoney just uses Russian operators to answer their calls. And in this epoch of total globalization it’s absolutely fair. I can’t accept the part about Panamanian registration either because I don’t see what is wrong with an offshore registration to cut your tax bill. In my opinion, it’s a wise decision. By the way, AlterGold itself registered in Panama according to their words so I don’t accept it as an argument against PerfectMoney. And finally, I can’t accept the hints made by the author of this post that Russia equals scam. I live in Russia and can say we have even better financial institutions in many ways. Europe just doesn’t recognize them because of the fear of the open competition from the BRIC countries. (That’s Brazil, Russia India and China for those who don’t already know.)

“Again, No offence but I found that Offshore registrations are also possible in Switzerland, All you have to do is to Google some keywords and your will find sponsored results and they will give you Virtual office, bank account in swiss. I was able to find some more records using “Leutschenbachstrasse 95? address other then PerfectMoney, I am not saying its a bad thing at all and I do know that some people will ask that AlterGold is registered in Panama, so, As an answer to this, They should include rest of others payment processor in such list, Like another famous one from Costa-Rica. But all I said this is just because I or any one that is smart enough will not look at PerfectMoney as the way which PerfectMoney itself wants. (At least after reading their interview with Blog I have mentioned above)“.

This paragraph is already an insult and hints that PerfectMoney may be a scam payment processor. But if we look at AlterGold history we can see that it was blamed as well for many things. I remind you that AlterGold only started its own online activity this year as well and can’t be considered as a reliable payment processor with a long history behind it like for example Webmoney or Pecunix.

“AlterGold isn’t looking forward to put some sort of “SMS’ed PIN code verification”. Because in reality this thing is not going to work due to technical reasons. First there is nothing unique about it, a payment processor called “Money Bookers” also has this features, I have personally tried it and it’s always delayed (for me). I don’t know if PerfectMoney has real technology to send SMS directly to numbers or just they send email to People who setup “Email to SMS” addresses. Instead AlterGold is looking towards a CRYPTO card kind of solution for its exchangers and perhaps business account holders too. I believe that PerfectMoney will try to come up later again with some better features to offer or at least change its attitude towards other businesses.”

It’s good that AlterGold is developing and is going to introduce Cryptocard (like e-bullion by the way) or just introduced PIN-code (like e-gold). So criticizing others for some additional security measures as being nothing special doesn’t add the much credibility to AlterGold. Many features are actually being used by other payment processors as well and it doesn’t make them less effective or efficient.

“Once again, Best of luck to PerfectMoney, And It is a great pleasure for me to find they created their payment processor while holding AlterGold up as the ideal, You will find similar things (deposit/withdraw, personal/business accounts, etc..) and If there is a programmer(s) in need of any kind of help from the technical side or something, We welcome them to create a support ticket at AlterGold (offer only valid for PerfectMoney).”

I think this statement has absolutely no ground behind it as well. As I mentioned already there are many features that AlterGold itself took from other payment processors. Is it a bad thing or is there some copyright applied to these features? I don’t think so and AlterGold knows it perfectly well when copying some security measures from other payment processors. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to do at all. In my opinion it’s good but that’s what AlterGold blamed PerfectMoney for.

On the other hand, speaking of AlterGold I can’t agree with PerfectMoney representative that it’s an amateur payment processor. In my opinion, AlterGold is really a professional payment processor. If you don’t take into consideration the insults towards others AlterGold is absolutely great. It’s not only a payment processor, but also a money exchanger and debit card provider. AlterGold is approved by many professional sites and exchangers and in my opinion one should definitely have an account in AlterGold nowadays.

This is taken from their blog: “AlterGold offers many unique features.Like multiple user access, mobile (WAP) site, internal messaging, quick payment URLs, etc… You will NEVER find all these in other places. AlterGold offers various funding and withdrawing options to its users, So at AlterGold, Your online money means real money unlike other payment processors. (Imagined/Virtual balances only). At least AlterGold‘s is not an anonymous payment processor.”

Also I felt some excitement when I read this: “AlterGold office is being setup. After a lot of research works we found the place which is best for AlterGold kind of business, so in few months, You will hear good news from us. There would not be any need to hide Country name we decided but we have to keep it a secret until we are done, very soon. But I assure you that it will NOT be another virtual office nor Phone lines forwarding system. We are also working on setting up a support center with full staff there answering emails and phone calls 12?6. This will be physical office address that really exists. Unlike almost all of other payment processors because we do know about virtual offices being setup in Switzerland, Costa Rica and Panama.” Of course, LibertyReserve also has been trying to open a real office now but it’s still a distant plan and if AlterGold was here for real it would greatly increase their confidence in them.

The last part taken from AlterGold blog update is about DDoS-protection. In my opinion, it’s not so good as it described there how they experienced some long downtime in the past but hopefully their site is stable now: “We have faced worst DDoS attacks 2 times. Just like other “real” payment processor, AlterGold was able to survive. We found many solutions for protection against DDoS. We contacted several companies including DragonAra (the one which protects PerfectMoney and perhaps LibertyReserve too) but we were not able to setup deal with DragonAra but I am very thankful to BlockDos.net as they protected us from DDoS attack we were facing on time of need and we are spending thousands of U.S. dollars on protection of our main server, and as well as AlterGold is based on multiple servers (sites is distributed in different servers so if a part faces a problem other keeps working).”

What can I say about this long AlterGold update as a whole? I don’t like their constant comparing with main competitors like LibertyReserve and PerfectMoney. In my opinion, it’s a sign of weakness as any reliable payment processor shouldn’t talk about others more than about itself. Especially I didn’t like the insults which could be addressed in a more polite manner instead of blaming others and considering them as scammers. I hope there will be no war among payment processors anymore as I always was for honest competition. I know that the “no fees” feature on PerfectMoney internal transactions is hard to beat but I really hope that AlterGold will learn this lesson and refrain from such unprofessional attacks in the future.

By the way, it would be logical now to mention some other features PerfectMoney is preparing to add in the near future. This is the recent update from their site:

“This month we are glad to announce the launch of money mail system. Now you can easily send an internal transfer to a person knowing only his e-mail address. It is not necessary for him/her to have an account in the system as one can manage the transferred funds by receiving a message on money transfer and by having passed the required algorithm of registration in the system.

The opportunity to deal with Internet-business and to work with electronic currency in a native language, to be constantly protected, to make money transfers confidentially and to feel confident in tomorrow – exactly these things were aimed at and were successfully achieved as the first months of the operation have showed.”

By the way, to find out more about these payment processors and their advantages you’re welcome to read my interviews with AlterGold payment processor published here and PerfectMoney payment processor here. I really hope there will be only honest competition between them and not a constant war which is not in the interests of online investors at all.

By the way, sorry for not publishing any news and updates from the online investment programs today as I will do it tomorrow. Stay with my blog and soon you will know even more useful info. I can promise you that.