For consumers whose credit cards are used in online fraud, there's no loss. The bogus charges are almost always refunded. But for online retailers who get conned into processing the orders, there is no relief.

If it's fraud, you get a chargeback. You're out the order, the merchandise you shipped and the online fees charged by your credit card processor.

Those chargebacks are never pleasant. In the early days, I had my share. But after plenty of grumbling, I decided to consider them what financial expert and radio talk show host Dave Ramsey calls a "stupid tax."

Then, I set my mind to learn from them so I wouldn't keep paying the "stupid tax."

I started by making a list of every chargeback I was hit with over a 12-month period. I rigorously examined them, looking for patterns and similarities. As a result, I instituted some security procedures and checklists that have worked well in greatly reducing the fraud losses from my stores.

I still get stung, but very rarely these days.