Hello Shopify team,
I am aware that this issue with this specific address has been brought up before, where scammers are using stolen credit cards using the billing/shipping address of 77 greatwood lane villa rica GA 30180 to place fraudulent orders. But it appears these scammer are beginning to outsmart the fraud detection system somehow.
Just so everyone is aware, my store mainly sells DIGITAL products, so the shipping address is not required, only the BILLING address(for obvious reasons). But here is the problem, and I believe the scammers have chosen my store and similar stores for this very reason.
Shopify only allows Shopify plus users to block specific billing address using the checkout blocks (from my research). Also from my research, there does not appear to be any other known app that can blacklist specific billing addresses (but so many apps that can block the SHIPPING addresses). And HOW these scammers are able to use thousands of different credit cards with the same billing address is beyond my comprehension.
Now please be aware that I am 100% aware that Shopify Flow can block medium-high risk orders. Infact, I use this very same system to block such orders. However, as of today I am starting to get orders from this same billing address that are now tagged as LOW RISK (please see the file attached).
ladies and gentlemen, when we all thought this problem was solved; when we all thought we could put this problem behind us, the scammers have finally found a way to get past Shopify’s fraud detection system.
Right now, the ONLY solution I can think of is to manually fulfil my digital download files one at a time, which would take an unreasonable amount of any business owners time. Right now I am willing to pay the whatever X amount of money that I must cover to refund these fraudulent orders because its just not worth the time looking through so many orders for this specific address that are low risk and circumvent the Shopify flow feature that will only auto-capture payments for low risk orders.
Luckily, these scammers are only purchasing low cost digital products on my store, however, for those who sell high ticket items, and are not aware of this specific billing address, then its basically game over, as there is no way of telling if it is a high risk order because Shopify is no longer flagging some orders from this address as of today. How unfortunate.
I hope the higher ups of Shopify see this message. I believe there is a massive operation going on, something much bigger than we think, and if Shopify does not do something fast, then these scammers are going to at some point double down on their operation and launch more large scale attacks on stores mainly setup for digital products now that the fraud system isn’t doing its job (or maybe it is, but the scammers have found a way to get past it).
On an end note, I also believe that this issue may have to involve the FBI, because there should be no possible way to successfully use thousand of different credit cards for 1 billing address. I’ve even seen fraud orders with American Express cards with this billing address successfully make a purchase, and American Express is supposed top notch!
