I don’t see any common apps.
We have
Variant Option Product Options
POWR Contact Form
Shopify Theme tool
That’s exactly what I did and it’s quieted since. But I also need that product active and is a temporary fix.
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We’ve set all our $0 products to $1 for now and that seems to have gotten rid James James for now.
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.
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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.
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This isn’t a place to promote your app.
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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?
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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?
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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?
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Same issue, STEP UP SHOPIFY! Shut this down
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I just found this community discussion after…yup…James James hit my site today. I just sync’d my site with the Google & YouTube as you have up there and I am wondering if this is how he found me. Sync was done last week. Poor James didn’t want to pay shipping charges on the free product, so he abandoned checkout. He must have a way to find things that are free. I had uploaded some fabric (I have a quilt shop) and mistakenly didn’t put the price in. If nothing else, he helped me find that I hadn’t put the price in.
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I got hit with this today.
138 Abandoned Checkouts by James James.
35 customer listings created with different rtremail.com emails.
2 orders placed for $0 items; customers “Naveen Naveen” and “Lincoln Lincoln”
James James account gives a fake address for San Antonio CA (no such address shows up in google maps) and a 415 area code phone number.
Lincoln Lincoln account gives a Lady Lake, FL address and a 510 area code phone number.
Naveen Naveen gives a Little Elm, TX address with a 916 area phone number.
I cancelled the orders.
I deleted all the bogus accounts.
I archived all the abandoned carts.
Is there anything else I can do to prevent this from happening again? Has anyone found a solution?
@Shopify_77 @Victor_5 This seems to be a growing problem that many people are experiencing despite reCaptcha, and we shouldn’t have to pay for additional services to protect our businesses. Are there other things we can do to prevent ourselves from being targeted again?
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Were the items in your abandoned shopping carts $0.00 as well?
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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”
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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?
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.
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.
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Yes. And “James James” returned again twice more tonight, for a total of over 450 abandoned carts in the last 12 hours or so.
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I am currently speaking with a shopify advisor via chat, and they seem to be taking this seriously. If I learn anything useful, I will share it. Hopefully they an get to the bottom of this issue and block these bots/scammers.
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It now appears that he is able to change the sell price on items to $0.00. His abandoned carts have items that used to have a cost attached. Our default shipping rate hits all orders that are not put in as a pick up on site. This is why he hasn’t completed any sales.
Another thing I am finding is that the ‘cycle’ hitting our site is around every four hours.