ImLive.com: Disputing An Erroneous $450 Porn Charge Is A "Serious Violation Of Our Terms Of Use"
Someone hacked reader E's account on the adult site ImLive.com and bought up $450 worth of credits. By the time E. caught the charge, half of the credits had already been used. When E. informed the site that he was planning to file a chargeback with his credit card company, he was warned that doing so would be "considered a serious violation of our terms of use." The site's suggested alternative was simple: they would restore the used credits, and E. could watch lots and lots of porn.
E. writes:
The website imlive.com is a very popular webcam site. They provide (for the most part) adult entertainment with a per credit/ per minute fee of about 1$ per credit (bought in increments of 50$. I was a member of the site since 2006 and used it off and on. Stupidly i allowed the site to save my Credit card info on their site. Then much to my shock I found a 450$ charge on my card two weeks ago from their billing provider (ccbill). And found two "confirmation" emails in my inbox. I put quotes around confirmation as they werent really checking to confirm just cheerily informing me that i had made these purchases. I quickly logged onto their site and called their customer service and literally sat there watching the credits that had been purchased tick away by someone who had hacked my account on their site and was fraudulently making purchases on my credit card.While on the site i changed my password and called their customer service. This stopped the hacker from being able to use my account. Unfortunately he had already used 250 credits by then. Upon contacting them they were able to disable my credit card purchases from the site (I later just canceled my credit card altogether.) Upon contacting their fraud department i was told that because the purchases were made under my username and pass and that purchases were already spent they were unable to refund any of the money. They offered to replace the credits. I found that to be wholly unacceptable as i really cant afford 450$ worth of adult material. I contacted my Credit card and they informed me that they would open a fraud investigation but they warned me that they would likely run into the same issue. As a good faith step i complied with imlive's request to keep them informed if i had made a decision not to accept their offer of free credits. I informed them that my credit card was investigating the fraud. Thats when the situation went off the rails. And i received the following email.
I am in receipt of your last email.
I want to make it very clear that all personal details regarding your Imlive.com account are held in strict confidentiality, and are never released to third parties.
Please note that it is one's responsibility to keep his Imlive.com account details secure and to not use it on other sites. Imlive.com will not be held responsible if your personal details have been accessed.
There are a number of locations on the site in which you are prompted to change and update your password to secure your details which you have not used in the past two years.
Your Imlive.com account was accessed with legitimate login and password to purchase the disputed charges, and thus we consider these charges as your own.
Nevertheless, since you have been a valued member since 2006 we offered an exceptionally generous solution as we rarely approve refunds for transactions of this sort.
Filing a fraud claim with your credit card company will result in a charge back. Charge backs are considered a serious violation of our terms of use.
If you have already filed a report with the credit company, I will not cover the debit that will result in your account due to the charge back.
In case you can pull back your filing with the credit company and respect the offer we presented, I will refund the last two transactions and bonus your account as previously agreed.
We reserve our right to keep all records of your activity with the Sexual Stress Relief Hosts on the ImLive.com platform.
Sincerely,
Sandy Mills,
Manager
Imlive.comNot only were they trying to scare me out of a chargeback if one was issued by my credit card. But i think the last sentence is an explicit attempt to illicit fear that somehow my actions on their adult site would be exposed on a public forum. Obviously as i am emailing you to expose this gross mismanagement of security and subsequent lack of accountability for their mismanagement of security i could care less about exposing the fact that i enjoy the occasional viewing of the bare human form. I have yet to hear back from my Credit card company (USAA) but my account on imlive has been closed (by them) and I am beginning to believe more and more that i am out of 450$ because of a security flaw on their site. My account info and password on their site was never given out or used on other sites and was hacked as an obvious use of username/password list hacking software (i.e. software that repeatedly tries u/p combinations until it finds a hit).
E. later sent us an update:
My credit card company agreed to call it fraud and gave me a chargeback for the 450$. After that imlive deleted my account with them. Which is fine with me after the way they treated me. I received no contact from them since.
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Comments:
Agreed - there's usually something out there for free that brings me to my special place. Usually a 15-20 second clip.
Excuse me, I'm rolling on the floor laughing right now.
On one hand, we have a consumer issue.
On the other... Ok I cannot continue any more here.
You should just quietly filed a chargeback, without posting it to Consumerist.
Here's a ''rip-off report''
[www.ripoffreport.com]
Was it really a good idea to email Consumerist about your porn problem? Really?
@webreacher: Yea this one's a classic. I doubt many readers to Consumerist would admit such an embarrassing issue to the general public. Granted I'm willing to bet over 80% of Consumerist readers (as well as the browsing public in general) browse porn anyway, but still, this one has got to be a new classic here. Well, at least didn't reveal true names!
@TheObserver: such an embarrassing issue.
Remember the Consumerist ethic. Viewing porn isn't half as embarassing as paying for it.
Considering the wide variety of free porn on the net, the only reason to pay for porn is that you have a fetish so obscure, you have to pay to have it made especially for you. Hairy elderly Asian she-male amputee dwarf porn, perhaps?
@paulrules: When the problem is someone else using his account information to pay for their porn, it's absolutely a good idea. :)
@paulrules: Hey, the man is secure in the fact that he buys porn. Who cares? Porn sites can be viscous in this manner and a lot of people consume them, they need to be called out just like any other company.
I assume all you people who are too embarrassed to talk about their porn viewing habits just feel bad because they would have fallen for this scam?
I dont see the issue here. An authorized credit card payment was taken, the breach in security was not the companys problem, or fault. You saved CC info, your account then requested 450 Credits, and you yourself, authorized this company to bill you for these credits.
Your chargeback is fraudulent. The method for this should be like any other theft, a report to the police, so investigations can proceed
So he shouldn't complain because he was defrauded by a porn company/provider?
He's an adult, it's really not that big of a deal what type of company defrauded him. He may be alerting others who use this service what can happen on this site.
I get my porn for free, but if I decide to pay for it I know NOT to use this site.
Isn't that what this site is for, you warn other consumers about bad companies? Isn't that what the OP is doing?
Geez, it's porn no biggie.
Sorry, I think ImLive behaved nobly.
They had no way of knowing if this guy's complaint was legit. The charge, so far as they were concerned, was authorized, yet they decided to suck it...I mean...they decided to bend over...what I meant to say was that ImLive tried to make the guy hole...uh...whole as best they could without burning a $450 hole in their pockets.
I'll bet they get phony charge backs every hour of every day from spouses trying to explain legit charges in their credit cards.
Not to blame the OP here, but what is more likely? That a hacker targeted this guy, managed to crack his username and password and then charged up an amount of money just to watch porn?
Or that the OP's son/best friend/ex-roommate that knew his username/pw did it?
I'm not saying it isn't true... just that I have a hard time believing it. Generally speaking, your hacker rings are after bank account information, not some grainy pseudo-porn.
The email they sent was a little bit on the threatening side... but I can't say it's that unreasonable either. People should be held accountable for keeping their own information secure. It's not like they lost his credit card number and refused to take responsibility, that would really be ridiculous. And they did send emails to his own email address confirming the charges. What more should they have done?
I say cut the guy some slack. He wanted to watch "live" nude ladies in real time. Most pre-recorded free porn online is not live. Why make fun of the guy for wanting some realism instead of canned porn? It's his money.
Tasteless? Perhaps. But it's a free country, and he was paying for a legal service. I just don't see what the big deal is.
@webreacher: You should just quietly filed a chargeback, without posting it to Consumerist.
Why? It's the general prudishness prevalent in America that made imlive.com feel secure in presenting their veiled threat "We reserve our right to keep all records of your activity with the Sexual Stress Relief Hosts on the ImLive.com platform." Why should the OP feel held hostage because of this crap? Sexuality is a normal human process. If he feels the need/desire to pay for porn, so what? If he's ripped off, it only helps everyone else by posting it to the Consumerist so everyone can be aware of imlive's habit of threatening customers who are exercising their rights.
@LuvJones: I'm curious what demos are more common to this site. I have a hard time thinking that anyone under thirty would consider this very embarrassing
@paulrules: Even if you're morally opposed to this "adult material" in every way possible, the fact is that the material on this site is ostensibly legal, so it's a product like any other.. thus, E. is a consumer like any other.
These same questions invariably surface on posts about disgruntled customers of [insert luxury item or service], and invariably, the answer is the same: No matter how you feel about the necessity, appropriateness or morality of the purchase/item/service, at the most basic it still involves a (defrauded) customer-business transaction.
@GayNerd: Assuming the OP is telling the truth (I see no reason he'd lie) then ImLive's server logs would indicate that the same account was accessed from two different computers, at two different IP addresses at roughly the same time. So, they DO have a way to verify the OP's claim - they just like money too damned much to do the customer friendly thing on their own.
@Radi0logy: To some people, $450 worth of porn is more valuable than the money itself. It could have been a relatively simple attack on a server that just happened to have the OP's account on it. It most likely wasn't a targeted attack, the OP was most likely just unlucky.
Also, it doesn't really make a difference if it was a hacker or a shady acquaintance - a fraudulent charge is a fraudulent charge, plane and simple.
@GayNerd:
They even admitted he hadn't used the account in ages. Unless this person had a porn meltdown and went crazy, I am willing to bet the OP didn't purchase $450 worth of cam viewing time.
Most attacks are automated and the people who get the information don't care what it is, they will figure out a use for it. In this case it seems the hacker wanted to fap to some cam shows...
Furthermore, they have every way of finding out if the OP was the person behind the charges and viewing of porn. IP addresses, etc...
They were relying on the OP being embarrassed about his porn admiration, yet that shit only works on teenagers, people with low self worth, and or hypocrites.
@Radi0logy: What's your point? Even if his son/best friend/ex-roommate did it, it's still fraud. Everything the OP stated is that he did not authorize the charges.
Unless the hacker is smart enough to steal usernames and passwords to porn sites and doesn't mess with other sources. That describes more than a few hackers...
There was a guy that went around hacking e-sports websites a few years back that simply placed a picture of a eurotrash guy flipping you off into the page and deleted any databases attached to the website.
To each their own....
Sorry OP, But thats not fraud. It should be a dispute(chargeback).
Am I the only one who can barely get past that the OP doesn't know where the dollar sign goes?
@webreacher: Well we dont' know who OP is, and won't, and meanwhile this could have (although it's alreadhy fixed now) gotten him a resolution
@What The Geek: I agree with you to an extent; fraud is fraud. But at the same time, there are certain security measures that every consumer should be able to follow. Keeping your usernames/passwords secret and at least somewhat diverse is one of them. Sure, fraud is fraud, but should imlive REALLY be held accountable because someone left his password saved on the computer (which seems to be more likely the case here)? I guess it's a matter of which way you lean, but I'd wager probably not.
@webreacher: I hear if you continue with that other hand, it's like a stranger is doing it for you ....
I love how this guy says it's an "obvious" sign of a brute force hack. Why kind of hacker would want to waste time doing this?
I think he himself somehow exposed himself to a keylogger or spyware and it stole his key. Or he lets other use his computer.
Not blaming the OP just suggesting that his side is not the only one and that he should excercise proper surfing habits. :)
That isn't necessarily true. There's more stolen user/password for porn sites publicly posted online than there are bank accounts. Very few people are willing to report that their accounts have been compromised though because of the whole shame attached to porn. If you don't believe me, go peruse 4chan for a few hours and you'll see the vast amount of resources that go into doing brute force hacks onto porn sites to get at their pics and videos just for the jollies of a few thousand teenagers.
@veg-o-matic: Service, actually. Unless he's recording and saving the webcam sessions, it's a service, not a product. Your point still stands, I just thought I'd point that out.
Most currencies put their mark after the amount.
He could've been canadian or australian too. US isn't the only one that uses Dollars.
@runchadrun: I see that error more and more, shameful considering how often it comes from lifelong Americans...
Wow, that company was sure being a dick here. I mean, really, at least don't threaten the guy and make him think his reputation is going to be screwed. Seriously, why don't they just bend him over here while they're at it with this customer service rape on his account and finances.
Awesome. Just one more reason NOT to pay for porn.