James James and the world of Automated Abandoned Cart Robots

[Jamie_Grove]

Hi, folks.

As most people know Google and Facebook will both place automated test orders to verify shipping and other details. The names are fairly well-known and they always abandon before finalizing checkout.

We have a new friend showing up in our logs by the name of James James. The email address sfj9usfhuios@gmail.com and location is San Antonio, California 94105. This bot is trying to check out 4-5 times per day with some of our free digital printables but abandons before going through with it. I have no idea why this might be happening because these particular products are not in the direct feeds going to FB and Google, though I know the page for the product still resides in Google.

Anyway, just wondering if anyone else has had this particular name/email combo come up in their abandoned cart logs.

Thanks!

Jamie

[Yvy616]

That’s exactly what I did and it’s quieted since. But I also need that product active and is a temporary fix.

[adfuel]

We've set all our $0 products to $1 for now and that seems to have gotten rid James James for now.

[Rahul]

I think We Found out the Solution, Just Open > Customers Section in Shopify tab, For Example the Customer Name is James James and Customer Mail is sfj9usfhuios@gmail.com Simply delete the Customer From  > Customers Section ( on Shopify Dashboard ) Now Open your website go on Log in & Register Section, Simply Register with same name ( James James ) and same gmail ( sfj9usfhuios@gmail.com ) ( of that bot is using to create Abandoned Checkouts ), and create a Strong Password, Now you'll see the bot is failed to place Abandoned Checkouts on your store. 

[Rahul]

I think We Found out the Solution, Just Open > Customers Section in Shopify tab, For Example the Customer Name is James James and Customer Mail is sfj9usfhuios@gmail.com Simply delete the Customer From  > Customers Section ( on Shopify Dashboard ) Now Open your website go on Log in & Register Section, Simply Register with same name ( James James ) and same gmail ( sfj9usfhuios@gmail.com ) ( of that bot is using to create Abandoned Checkouts ), and create a Strong Password, Now you'll see the bot is failed to place Abandoned Checkouts on your store.  

[Billherb]

We also had a run in with James James. We use omnisend and it showed how several times a day James James is logging in straight to checkout. Shopify needs to fix this threat. Ours started Jan 15

[ArrowsAim]

I have tried everything I can to escalate this with Shopify: multiple cs chats. calls, & twitter. I keep being advised to either activate captcha (which I already had) or install an app. Unfortunately, from what I'm hearing in other threads (linked above), apps designed to solve similar issues are effectively being circumnavigated and developers are telling folks that this isn't something they can fix.

[azulinahome]

We are having the same exact issue. James James conducting abandoned checkouts 2-3x a day on all our free $0 items. I just set them all to Draft, hoping that's a temp fix.

Also reached out to the help desk and the best they could do was offer that I download an App. I saw the visits were mostly coming from India and Indonesia, so I blocked those countries, but James James bot persists.

I will note that this all started around the time we went live with our Google ads.

[Jamie_Grove]

Update of sorts!

Per several suggestions in the thread, we deleted the James James account from our system, AND we deactivated the free digital download product they were trying to purchase. So far, we haven't had a recurrence of this particular abandoned cart bot. We did NOT install any other apps so it is possible they'll be back. Either way, Shopify really needs to address this since it is happening to so many people.

[elizaRAFTP]

Your app does not work to block this bot. 

[elizaRAFTP]

I don’t use that app. 

[ArrowsAim]

Klavio is not the commonality between shops who are being targeted by this particular bot. What each of us have experienced is that it finds shops with $0 items, hidden and visible, and goes from there. 

If you're serious about trying to figure this out, THAT is where you need to start.

[BK1012]

I use Klaivyo and Digital Downloads. This has been going on for months and it’s difficult to find actual abandoned carts. I’ll deactivate Klaivyo and see what happens. 

[adfuel]

This isn’t a place to promote your app. 

[tecques]

I've just joined this tech help community, I do best asking questions of real humans who know more than I. Sadly, Shopify's live help line was taken away, which I strongly feel serves them, but not us. Regardless, I wanted to share my experience with visits by James James since around 1-25,  same date others have mentioned. I have no apps, and from what you all say, they prove useless anyway.  Usually 2-4 vists each day, random times, all focused on in my case, an item listed as "price on request" (no value specified), as I'm an art dealer. This continued until last Sunday. The artwork JJ placed in the cart and visited roughly 50 times I decided to attach a significant real price to, and JJ within hours switched to another item which was price on request. about 10 viits later I gave a real price to that one, and they have not pestered me since.  My fear is that they may be exploiting a vulnerability or placing some virus / malware which will be activated at a later date. Shopify should thoroughly be on this, and while the live chat tech guy I finally got tried to be helpful, it did not sound like they were committing full resources to going after this bot. Why doesn't Shopify contact it's customer base to let them know what they are doing to safeguard our paid for presence on their platform? I was born & grew up here, but it seems like American companies regularly pass the buck and do not fully support the services they sell to us. I'd really like an answer to what Shopify knows and what they are doing about JJ and others similar attacks I personally have gotten in the past which are always under double names like JJ.....Thoughts anyone?

[Yvy616]

I completely agree! The Shopify is Canadian, it’s the same thing really. I believe the customer service personnel are either low wage or just don’t care, or don’t know and just read from a script. Sometimes I feel like I’m speaking to a brick wall when contacting their support.
If enough people make a stink of this, and go to social media, or other news platforms, maybe they will respond?

[L_Meeks]

We had the same exact issue as everyone else. James James has been gone since the 15th of February Wonder, has anybody else seen a decline or drop in sales since the start of James James?

[empiricalarby]

It's hitting my store currently every day multiple times

[Michael_Alon]

Same issue, STEP UP SHOPIFY! Shut this down

[Kary4]

Same thing happened to me today. Reached out to Shopify and basically they said this

“Thank you for your patience as we worked to investigate the issue you reported involving orders with zero totals on your shop. A select group of stores reported a similar issue. Upon investigation, it was observed that these stores had certain products listed as publicly available at no cost. It appears that a third party with potentially malicious intent discovered these free/no cost products and placed orders for them, utilizing the standard checkout process as any customer would. This third party took advantage of the information that was publicly accessible online, and there is no evidence suggesting these individuals had any unauthorized access to your store.” 

and also added that I need to remove any items that are classed as free as the only way to “resolve the issue”

[tecques]

Thanks for contacting Shopify about this and sharing their updated response with us. I hope they are gone, but worry that they have left something behind since they were obviously poking around 3-4 times a day, every single day for 2-3 weeks! What would logically be the point to it...I hope some "action" does not get triggered down the line and we are left unfunctional saying "I told you so"!  I'm not particularly "tech minded", but is what I say unreasonable to be concerned about?

[Kary4]

I completely understand your fears around this and I felt the same. The issue isn’t totally gone as I had it happen to me hours ago. But I have removed the “free” listings and hopefully that’ll put an end to it now. Ill

Definitely be keeping a close eye on this. None of the abandoned checkouts went through as orders for us as we don’t ship outside of the UK fortunately. 

[Yvy616]

That response doesn’t sound like they are doing anything about it. Just saying basically “don’t worry you’re fine” and dismissing it.

I don’t think this bot actually visits the store or adds to cart like a customer would. I was watching like a hawk for days and the abandoned checkouts do not match up with anyone from my visitor logs. Many times I had more abandoned checkouts from him than total visits in the same hour.

I also removed the add to cart button on the particular free item and they still proceeded with trying to check out.

I was told by a developer that it looks like this bot comes in through the back end somehow never really visiting my store as a customer would. So those blocking apps won’t work. And none have worked.
The only thing that has stopped him was putting the free item in draft mode. But that’s a temporary thing as I really need that product live, it’s an add-on I offer.

Shopify needs to take this seriously and protect their back end systems. They need to plug that hole.

[ildikonemeth]

I have the same issue, it found 2 active products for 0$ (which weren't supposed to be free, probably human error there). I added the price back to these and checked all the products on the website, hundreds of them, every single one lol, everything had a price. Couple hours later it found a Bundle item in the catalogue for 0$ which wasn't even on the website, only active through a Bundle app where it was accidentally created hence the 0$, so i would guess it really is going through the backend, because it is finding stuff you cannot find on the storefront. This is just horrendous, and hasn't been solved by Shopify for over 1 month. 

[Yvy616]

I just noticed this in shopify help center. https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/checkout-settings/bot-protection 

So it seems shopify DOES have an innate bot protection, but they only allow Shopify Plus have it??? That's pretty messed up. This is something that they will benefit from if we all have it. 

[Jamie_Grove]

This is only a temporary protection tool. It lasts 60 minutes. My guess is that it is something that takes extra setup on their end (and has costs associated - like a cloudflare captcha). In any case, I have Plus and I probably wouldn't use it for this particular issue.

[elizaRAFTP]

Hi! Our store also got James Jamesed in January and we spent weeks trying to block it/him (?) and tried all of the things Shopify support told us to do (zero help) and also tried three different fraud blocker apps (also didn’t work). We finally had our web designer tackle it and she successfully blocked him by creating a block tag on his account through our wholesale lock app. We had been deleting his account every day and he would just make a new one. So we left it and added the block tag so he can’t access any of our products and it has stopped. So sorry to everyone dealing with this and it’s so frustrating that Shopify just keeps saying there’s nothing they can do. 

[elizaRAFTP]

Hi I am adding to my comment above with an unfortunate update. We haven’t heard from James James since Feb 11th and thought that our block tag had worked (we blocked his account from accessing our store and specific $0 items using wholesale block app) but yesterday he came back and now we have a few dozen abandon carts with each of our $0 items coming in batches every couple hours. We cannot get rid of our $0 items, we are a non-profit and our primary function is to provide free supplies to other nonprofits. Anyway, back to square one which is “there’s nothing we can do” from @Shopify 

[bros]

This thread has almost 3,000 views in less than 4 weeks and Shopify still has not been helpful. @Shopify  please do something about this JAMES JAMES bot. 

[sabinevk]

@Shopify same issue in our shop. Please step up and give all shop owners a solution (not only Plus members for 60 minutes).
Bots have become indispensable these days, a solution must be found for this!

[akamai]

We have the samething happening from Mr. James James. The thing I don't understand is my website is wholesale and only allowed to access if you have an account and sign in. A customer cannot create an account, I must do so. But somehow James James is able to bypass the password/account log in hurdle, create an account on his own, and then place an order. I have a default shipping at .01 so it stops there. I did update my $0 item to have a cost so hopefully that is all i will hear from him, but I sure don't like this access.

Shereen

[RealTreat]

I have a similar setup and JJ got right around the Locksmith and Wholesale Gorilla barriers. It is very concerning indeed, that Shopify isn't demonstrating any concern over this via its customer support team. I have to hope that behind closed doors they are taking this seriously and working hard to address it. 

[sassybadge]

Yes, I am getting the same and Shopify help told me others are getting it too but so far they haven't taken care of it.

[HCMANDS]

Just experienced our first "James James" in our abandoned checkout early this morning.  There were only 2 and I saw the address was San Antonio, CA which I thought was odd so I googled the address which led me to this thread.  I deleted the customer and I do already have the Locksmith app so I locked the checkout page to that email hoping it will work.  I do have a few $0 products because I have a third part app that does my pricing.  We don't keep inventory, as all our items are made to order.  We also don't have any free shipping options, so hopefully those things sent the bot on its merry way.  But how disappointing of Shopify to not dig into this and figure out what they are trying to accomplish and how to prevent it.

[sassybadge]

That bot has been clogging up my abandoned shopping cart for weeks. Shopify told me "it's harmless" but has done nothing to stop it. I was told to archive them but there is no way to make them stop appearing in my cart log, it's awful. Then again, they just changed the dashboard again on their app which removed the last feature I actually used and they told me Too bad so sad, so why would we expect any better from Shopify? They are not what they used to be. Shopify "help" is useless.

[Ben12341]

The thing is, I am seeing they all have the same  @rtremail.com in common.  You'd think Shopify could at least block that until they get a complete solution.  Is everyone seeing these same emails?

[Ben12341]

and then there is James James with a different address

[AppMerc]

Mine all have a gmail address.  
Again, after we removed all 0.00 items - our friend has not been back.

[Ben12341]

Unfortunately, this won't work for us as we require free items

[BK1012]

Same here Ben. I offer free digital downloads and it is an incentive for people to invest in our store. 

[BK1012]

I’m going to try and offer a coupon for free digital downloads but keep the price at $1. I’ll let you all know if that works 🤷🏽‍♀️

[Scorpionmotor]

How do they add items to the cart that do not have an "add to cart" button?

[Ben12341]

I've heard they are going thru the back end.  Please, everyone contact Shopify and report this issue as we are not getting the attention this needs.

[RealTreat]

Maybe Shopify did block that email domain as JJ appears to be using a different address now. We got hit for the first time on March 15 by James James of San Antonio using sfj9usfhuios@gmail.com. 

[Jamie_Grove]

And it's not entirely harmless as it ends up entering your email lists and automated checkout abandonment flows.

[Scorpionmotor]

Hello, got hit last night and early this morning 32 orders @ $0.00 + over 400 abandon carts all @ $0.00. I do have  many "items" on the site that are not for sale eg the press section or garden/food photos etc - How do they add items to the cart that do not have an "add to cart" button? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Most James James for the abandon carts - sfj9usfhuios@gmail.com - James James - 321232 Klays san antonio California 94105 United States 2016570312

but the 32 orders @ $0.00 are mostly different people. 

[BK1012]

There are multiple threads on this with 100s of customers affected. Imagine the number who haven’t reported it! @Shopify  you need to step up and protect your customers. This is not harmless as it is wasting our time and energy. 

[Scorpionmotor]

Hello, yes I agree w/ you 100%. How do they add items to the cart that do not have an "add to cart" button?

[sassybadge]

Great point, it IS wasting our time and causing unease among all of use not referring to James James as a "NEW FRIEND," who as come to visit. As Shopify worded it...unbelievable.

[capecalikim]

Yes, we have an average of 10 abandoned carts away from James James in San Antonio, California.

[Ben12341]

Have you reported this to Shopify?  The more people who contact them, the better chance we have of getting this fixed.