How do I handle a high volume of fraudulent orders?

[abba122]

Hi there,

Did anyone had too many fradulent orders problem before? How did you deal with it?

We used fraud filter app to block some frequently presented zip codes and some emails/phone numbers. We also turned on manual payment capture to avoid more transition costs, according to shopify support's suggestion. Besides, we did contact all customers, if there are orders are less suspicious, in case we missed any real customers, but sadly, none of them are real. Even for the few ones that passed risk check, the card holders, who were reached by phone numbers from billing info, told us they didn't make the purchase. This was really fraustrating that some potential card stealing scammers can pass the risk check.

We've tried anything we can, but we are still keep getting fraudulent orders......I suppose our store is targetted by some scam teams. Did anyone know what else we can do like reporting this to somewhere, except just waiting for the scammer to lost their interest? 

An overview of our poor order records:

- Ab

[Victoria]

Hi, @abba122.

Thank you for all of that context to give us a better understanding of the situation.

I understand the complexity of the issue when you receive fraudulent orders and have taken all of the necessary precautions to prevent these orders from coming through. 

I would like to share a few suggestions of my own to help further prevent fraudulent orders being processed and ensure you're able to avoid these frustrating situations in the future.

Tips to help prevent fraudulent orders:

• Shopify has a built in Fraud Analysis tool that is able to flag orders in your Shopify admin that pose a higher risk of being fraudulent. These flags allow you to investigate suspicious or high risk orders prior to fulfillment. When an order has been flagged, we highly recommend that you verify that the order has been authorized by the actual cardholder before capturing and/or fulfilling the order.
• Our Fraud Prevention Guide lists information on strategies for verifying cardholders.
•  To help confirm the legitimacy of an order, we recommend asking your buyer to provide an unaltered color image of their government issued ID along with an image of the credit card. (Please advise them to block out all but the last 4 digits of the card for security reasons) to make the purchase.
• If you have doubts about the legitimacy of your buyer and fulfilling an order, we strongly advise you refund and cancel the order. This can help in preventing you from receiving a chargeback for that order. Regrettably once an order has been disputed and chargeback procedure commenced, you are unable to proceed with refunding an order.

I would also like to share a couple fraud prevention apps that can assist you further with fraud prevention measures.

• NoFraud Fraud Protection
• FraudLabs Pro Fraud Prevention

[gmappros]

Those options still don’t answer the actual issue of stopping the fraud payments from continuously happening.

[ParadiseFound]

That’s because she’s an AI Chat bot…Shopify rarely uses actual humans to help you

[happypiper]

My store is currently experiencing this same exact issue over the past week.  You had asked about waiting to see if the scammer lost interest, which wasn't actually answered by the support team.  So, did the scammer eventually stop; did you do something else to help negate this issue; just looking for insight into this because as you know it is very, very frustrating.  Thank you for your time.

[Ant777]

Our store is getting a lot of those fake orders too, Shopify does not offer any way to stop these orders from coming in. The fraudulent orders come under the names of "fsgrdr BOSTHL", "wdawfesg fsgf", "ESPTQPR ESPTQPR", "SAFSB AFEGSB" and many more.

This is just a sample of the 120 orders we received today Sep20, 2023.

This is very frustrating. This has been going on for 3 months now.

We used "Fraud Filter" but this app does not stop those crooks from getting in, we are also using "Blocky" and "Bloky", but these don't help at all.

I wish there was a way we could block these crooks from entering orders.

We my have to find another commerce platform that provides better ways to block the unwanted customers.

[RosieClaire]

Any update here? My store is now being targeted and I get endless fraudulent orders. Then I get hateful emails from "customers." I've used IP blockers but then orders come through from other IPs. Nothing seems to prevent the orders. Any suggestions? 

[lireille]

Our website also has the same issue. In addition, we were also charged a fat credit card processing fee due to high ticket orders and bank fees for chargebacks. We spent hours dealing with this by talking to Shopify customer support, which only has chat support and no phone support. Our frustration is with Shopify. They recommended we use workflow and cancel all high-risk orders, which we did. Still, it only worsened the situation as automatic cancellation took the funds out of our account, and there was a chargeback again, so the funds got taken out twice. We spend a lot of time talking to Shopify support. They said they couldn't help and suggested that we speak to the fraudulent customer and the bank that processed the card, which Shopify can't disclose. It leaves us helpless. 

The question is why Shopify can't reject all orders flagged as high-risk orders that do not match the CVV and zip code. We all know that when we use other websites if we type in the wrong CVV code or zip code, many websites can automatically decline the card. Why can't mighty Shopify do the same? It is not rocket science. So, is Shopify making a profit with this business practice since this is draining our time and resources and their customer support costs as well? If Shopify does not take fraudulent orders seriously and does not have the will to solve this problem, we will have to look for another hosting e-commerce platform.