I wanted to block my website Traffic for Specific Countries.

Technical Q&A
1

Hello, Please Anybody tell how to Block my website Traffic for specific Countries. please Contact me.

2

Hey @YataiDecor .

Thanks for reaching out. I would be more than happy to help. Before we dive into your query, I would love to know more about why you would like to block specific countries from your site? Is it because would like to block specific visitors from shopping on your store from some regions? Unfortunately, we don’t have the ability to block countries for specific stores on our end.

With that being said, there are a couple of workarounds available to you, which I will walk through below:

  • If you would like to exclude a specific country, you could always exclude a shipping rate for that country. That way, no one from that country can check out. Learn more about shipping and rates here.

  • This feature can also be done by the use of a third party plugin. There is an app called ThinkConvert Visitor Blocker, which allows you to block traffic from specific countries. They offer a 3-day free trial along with a plan from $17.49/month, so check it out when you have time!

  • The Locksmith app is another great option you could look at, it is very popular among our merchants too. With this app, you can grant or disable access to your store based on conditions. You could check out their 15-day free trial to see if the app is for you, and they also offer a $9/month plan.

Aside from that, how is business going for you? Is this your first store, or are you an already established seller? I would love to hear more about your business and goals!

3

I can tell you why I want this feature.

because all my spam comes from india, and I dont have any reason to be doing business with them, the only orders I have gotten turned out to be attempted scammers, and the rest of the traffic are spammers. certain countries are not customers are just nuicenses.

as a new customer to shopify I am starting to realize you guys just do not care about this. you make ME login with a code to protect my account and other platforms use the same tech to stop spammers, so then why it is a pay feature on shopify to stop the spam? thats the real question.

4

Hi, @FatesWebb !

I appreciate you sharing your reasons for desiring this feature. It is reasonable to want to prevent spam from specific countries, particularly if you have encountered attempted scammers and spammers from those regions.

In regard to your concern about Shopify’s spam prevention approach, please be assured that we take spam prevention seriously and provide a range of tools and features to assist merchants in combating spam. However, some of these features may only be available as paid add-ons such as blocking specific IPs.

We do have some information here in our help center to aid you with Fraud prevention, which also includes some free tools you can use to help with this. With that being said, I have added this as a feature request with our developers for you, so hopefully in the near future their may be something like this added to help with spam.

5

Not wishing to hijack the OP’s post but i can also attest to how lax Shopify’s fraud prevention appears to be. We have recently had 3 fraudulent orders that Shopify’s fraud analysis system advised were “low risk”. No matching card address, no CVV, no phone number and the order was placed from a completely different country to the one it’s being delivered to.

I’m with the OP on this one, that screams scam to me and Shopify’s system has let it straight through.

Fraud analysis

This order is low risk

LowMediumHigh

Indicators1. Positive

There was 1 payment attempt

  1. Neutral

    Card Verification Value (CVV) isn’t available

  2. Neutral

    Billing address or credit card’s address wasn’t available

  3. Neutral

    Billing address ZIP or postal code isn’t available to match with credit card’s registered address

  4. Neutral

    A payment method other than a credit card was used

  5. Neutral

    Location of IP address used to place the order isn’t available

  6. Neutral

    Distance between shipping address and location of IP address isn’t available

  7. Negative

    The billing address is listed as United Kingdom, but the order was placed from United States

  8. Negative

    A high risk internet connection (web proxy) was used to place the order

Additional information1. Positive

This order was placed from IP address 38.105.125.56

6

Can we block specific countries to restrict our website using code in the htaccess file?

7

Hi @Juddhopes ,

Merchants do not have access to a htaccess file for their Shopify store as this does not exist on our servers. If you want to block visitors from specific countries, I’d recommend checking out some of the apps on the Shopify App Store that offer this functionality.

8

This is the same answer I got from shopify, its ridiculous.

9

FitOpt ! Thank you for bringing this up. I see Shopify as a technology partner for we small to medium size business entrepreneurs. Its our job to be experts in the products/services we offer, how to reach the target personas, and general GTM /operational strategy. We are partnering with Shopify as they claim to be the experts in e-commerce technology and more specifically secure online e-commerce transactions - secure transactions for both the consumer and OUR BUSINESSES. Providing warnings of a potential fraudulent charge after the transaction is completed is useless. Fraud monitoring is as useless as sales history reporting alone - without early indicator metrics and other prevention methods, fraud efforts are worthless. Shopify, please listen! We need prevention tools instead of report history. We need a technology partner that can identify a fraudulent purchase before its processes(stop the purchase in its tracks). Right now, the only benefit to the flags post purchase is that it allows us an opportunity to get ahead of shipping…but we are still left with the back lash of an inevitable charge-back that most often happens before you can complete the investigation of the purchase - As shopify sellers, we are graded in part by the percentages of charge-backs we have ..AND…these kinds of charge backs are completely out of our control. We also get hit with fees AND - if you are paying on a capital advance, there is money deducted from your account for payment on a sale thats not actually a sale (as payment toward your capital advance).

10

Put your domain on Cloudflare.

11

I would love to block other countries from seeing my listings. They are using my pictures and making knockoffs and selling them for 4 or 5 dollars.

12

I am somewhat familiar with cloudflare but how do i go about setting this up inside CF

13

Did you get cloudflare to work with Shopify? It causes DNS issues for us every time.

14

Hello,

I have the same concern due to people posing as Shopify employees and marketing professionals that are clearly being dishonest. I need to know why someone is visiting my site 461 times from Iowa, 252 times on a VPN, 130 times from Oregon, Columbia, Ireland, Poland, Spain, Russia, Mexico, India, and Bangladesh. My store is new. This makes me feel uneasy. How are these people finding me? I set up Cloudflare because they have the best technology. Shopify does not support proxied domains so I can’t block them. My domain will only go through DNS. There is a Blocky and Blockify App but Not sure if they will get hacked. What type of security do these companies have? They are small businesses overseas. There is an orange to orange setup Cloudflare recommends. Would be nice to be able to use Cloudflare proxy on my domain.

15

To block website traffic from specific countries, you can use the following methods:

  1. Cloudflare: Set up a firewall rule to block or challenge traffic from selected countries.
  2. Server Configurations:
    • Apache: Use mod_geoip and update .htaccess.
    • Nginx: Use ngx_http_geoip_module and configure blocked countries.
  3. WordPress Plugins: Install plugins like Wordfence or GeoIP Blocker to block specific regions. I am using the GeoIP Blocker on our website to block unwanted traffic.
  4. CDN Providers: Use services like AWS CloudFront or Akamai to restrict traffic based on location.
  5. Custom Scripts: Integrate geolocation APIs (e.g., MaxMind or IPStack) to block traffic programmatically.

Always double-check to avoid blocking legitimate users. Let me know if you need more help!

16

Why do we as merchants have to pay for a third party app for something so basic as geofencing? This should be a basic feature within the core product to not only protect us from spammers and scammers, but also to better tailor offers to specific international markets for those who want to expand.

17

So what about the small businesses who cannot afford a service like Cloudflare? We all start up very small and want to grow, but do not seem to be able to be on the same footing as larger companies.

My site is the shopify store and I am left with nothing.

18

I am having this same issue! All my website traffic is from Germany and the US when I am based and only advertise locally in Australia. its driving me insane!

19

Hello,

You might find this app helpful: AppJetty Geo Location.
It allows you to redirect traffic based on location and block specific countries if needed.

Let me know if you’d like more details or assistance with setup.

20

Totally agree. Blocking traffic by country should be built into Shopify, not something we have to pay extra for as like other website do. It’s basic protection, not a premium feature.