I just launched a new store, it’s been 1 days with only 2 orders, and Shopify already flagged it for “illegitimate commerce activity” and flag my store under review .
This isn’t even the first time. I’ve had this happen on multiple stores before.
Every time I contact support, I get the same response:
“Due to privacy/security reasons, we can’t share the exact reason.”
But that makes no sense.
If I don’t know what triggered it, how am I supposed to fix it or avoid it in the future?
From my side:
No chargebacks
No refunds
Normal ads (Meta)
Brand new store, barely any activity
There’s literally nothing unusual happening.
The most concerning part is:
What if this happens to a store that’s been running for months or years? Getting suddenly shut down without a clear reason is a huge risk.
Has anyone figured out what actually triggers these flags?
Or how to prevent this from happening repeatedly?
Any real insight would help a lot because right now it feels completely unpredictable.
Frustrating I know, but Shopify doesn’t flag stores at random, there’s always something triggering it on their end even if support won’t tell you the specifics. The most common reasons newer stores get flagged in the first 1 to 2 days are:
Selling products in restricted categories.
Product images or descriptions copy pasted from another store.
Store details that don’t match.
Signing up from an IP previously associated with a flagged account, which would explain why this keeps happening to you across multiple stores.
That last one is worth taking seriously. If you’ve had multiple stores flagged in a row, Shopify’s risk system is likely linking them through device fingerprint, IP, payment account, or business details. Once that link is made, every new store starts with strikes against it before you even open the doors.
Solution:
Have you replied directly through your support ticket and specifically asked for it to be escalated to the Risk team, not frontline support? Frontline can’t share details, but Risk can sometimes give you a category of issue (product, account, payment) even if not the exact trigger. Also worth checking the email address tied to the flag email, sometimes there’s a reply path buried in there. Be straight with them about what you sell, what your supplier is, and your business setup. The more transparent you are, the more likely they review it properly. Hope you get it sorted.
Thanks for replying. That’s what makes this even more confusing — I’m currently running two other ecom stores under the same LLC, and both of them are working perfectly fine with Shopify Payments.
So it’s not like I’m new, and it doesn’t seem to be an issue with my business entity either.
This new store is structured the same way:
Same LLC
Similar setup
Same type of ads (Meta)
No unusual activity
Yet this one gets flagged within 2 days while the others are completely fine.
That’s why I’m struggling to understand what exactly is triggering this. If everything is consistent across stores, why would only one get flagged?