I have a fake name in my abandoned cart leaving fake email, fake address and fake phone number. Over 50 occurrences over a two week period. Should I be concerned? Do I need a special app to stop this.
Thank you for your help.
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Hi @ColonyMa ,
Thank you for reaching out. I understand that this can be concerning but it’s good that you have recognized these spam checkouts. Be sure to keep an eye out for any potentially fraudulent or fake orders that are placed even if at this time they appear to only be abandoning their carts at checkout.
This happens to many merchants and is not an immediate cause for concern as bot activity can be common on online stores. If you head to the “Spam protection” section in Online Store > Preferences, you’ll be able to enable Google reCAPTCHA on various pages on your store:
While this cannot prevent bots from accessing your checkout, it can prevent them from sending spam messages and creating accounts on the site.
There are also some third-party apps that can prevent bot activity on your site, such as Negate - Bot Protection and Shop Protector. These apps do come with a monthly charge but may be worth it if you feel that these spam checkouts are becoming a headache for your store.
Moving forward, I’d recommend being on high alert with regards to fraudulent orders coming in. This may just be bot behaviour on the checkout that won’t result in orders being placed but it’s good to be aware of the telltale signs of fake and fraudulent orders in general. Be sure to refer to our fraud analysis tool whenever an order comes in incase there are any potentially worrisome signs and you can also check out our documentation on fraud prevention to learn of other ways to protect yourself against potential scams.
I hope this helps but please let me know if you’ve any other questions.
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Thank you Victor,
I should say that the fake order is not placing any items in the cart. We do use Captcha but will check that it is on all checkouts.
Rick
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We have had the same situation, only there are at least 40 a day for the past week. It is filling up our AC report and we have to “dig” for authentic AC notifications. The name being used is James James. Is that similar to yours?
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Yes! Same with us 6-10 a day with the name James James. Shopify help??
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I would say that a friend of yours is making fun of you. Perhaps an unhappy customer? There is nothing that you can do about it. They will stop eventually
We’re experiencing the same, with a total of 97 ACs from Jan 25th through this morning, all from James James.
What’s the purpose or possible purpose of this? Should we be worried?
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Thank you for letting us know. Good questions. Maybe Shopify will look at this as not an individual account problem and help us solve the issue.
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SAme, but today we had 51 orders in about 7 min all from different people with first and last name the same. On live chat with Shopify rn.
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There’s NO WAY that these are not all related. But I don’t understand what they have to gain from it.
Hi Victor, your input is helpful, but is there a reason that Shopify does not have greater built-in protections for this issue? I am frustrated that we’re expected to pay extra for what seems to be a basic user experience and fraud protection issue.
Thanks for your input.
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I had 14 orders in 12 min this morning with the same name pattern, randomized emails from the same domain (@rtremail.com), and with a different IP for every order.
Here’s a thread w/ myself & 2 others having the same AC issue: https://community.shopify.com/c/technical-q-a/james-james-and-the-world-of-automated-abandoned-cart-robots/m-p/2442225#M150818
You’re the only other person I’ve found so far who’s also had actual orders placed in their shop.
This is a HUGE problem. @Shopify_77
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We had over 5,300 abandoned carts since 1/26 and almost 200 orders the last 2 days.
They are getting around recaptcha. They appear to be getting in via the account creation back door you created. The bot is creating tons of abandoned carts and tons of actual orders (fake orders). I have talked to one of our app developers and they can see there is nothing they can do with advanced product options to stop the problem. The bot is not making it to their app, it is piercing right to shopify. The bot is evolving too. It started as james james, then went to a same first name/last name and started completing checkouts, now i can see it is starting to make different first and last names. The next step might be tons of non $0 orders with stolen credit cards, or … This needs fixed @Victor_5 . This can screw up imports to accounting software, crm software, etc. Many of these programs have user or transaction limits and spending hours deleting everything is not acceptable. I am more inclined to switch platforms instead of waste my time with cleaning up the order mess.
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Thank you Steve82. I am hoping if we all share our issues with these abandon Carts that @Shopify_77 Support will help eliminate this problem.
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As a temp fix I set my $0 products to “draft” on Tuesday 2/13 and haven’t seen James James since.
That said, I’m not settling for this solution as a long term fix and I’m 100% with you on considering other platforms of @Shopify_77 doesn’t offer a solution.
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We are getting bot orders in from James James as well as other fake name /addresss with @rtremail.com ending but they are actually showing up as paid and needs to be fulfilled even though the sticker is $4 but payment is zero. Any thoughts on how it got into orders and not just abandoned cart as no payment was actually made?
Are you by chance using the digital downloads app?
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Nope! This thread has a list of apps between two users experiencing this issue: https://community.shopify.com/c/technical-q-a/james-james-and-the-world-of-automated-abandoned-cart-robots/m-p/2446453#M151036
At this point I’m positive these bots are crawling Shopify sites for items priced $0.00 and exploiting them to test platform vulnerability at checkout. Another user is now experiencing real items priced over $0.00 checking out for $0.00, marked as paid, without any method of payment.
The Spam Bot James James (first name and last name are the same) is hitting our store too. Over 5000 abandoned carts in 11 days. The bot is adding $0.00 products to the cart. For many years we have heavily relied on our $0.00 products for marketing purposes. We do not want to delete our $0.00 products.
Shopify Support is not much help.
Come on @Victor_5 Shopify. PLEASE come to the rescue soon!!!
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None of Shopify’s response to fix this issue work. And not all Shopify plans are “Compatible” for 3rd party apps. These bots are coming thru the backend and don’t appear in the “Live View”. Shopify needs to step up and fix this as we have $.00 items that we require in our store. Please contact Shopify and let them know if you have the same bot issue as they “decide what issue to work on next” and they need to hear our voices. See the “James James” discussion also on Community
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