Thousands of abandoned carts for the same item, new one every few min

Technical Q&A
1

Different name and email ever time.

Most have the same low dollar item in the cart with the cheapest shipping option.

Most show no attempt at a payment in the log. A few have come through with red fraud flags we are cancelling automatically with flow.

If there is no failed card info on most of them It can’t be trying stolen cards I would assume.

There was only one legit order on this page of 50 (I removed it)

Select abandoned checkout

#37986817966323
22 minutes ago
United States
Not Recovered

$14.46

Select abandoned checkout

#37985871233267
12:11 pm
United States
Not Recovered

$14.55
Select abandoned checkout

#37985730167027
11:53 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.09
Select abandoned checkout

#37985609810163
11:39 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.46
Select abandoned checkout

#37985481687283
11:21 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.09
Select abandoned checkout

#37985482375411
11:21 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.25
Select abandoned checkout

#37985398292723
11:09 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.25
Select abandoned checkout

#37985371619571
11:05 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.32
Select abandoned checkout

#37985338032371
11:00 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.55
Select abandoned checkout

#37985133068531
10:33 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.55
Select abandoned checkout

#37985124417779
10:32 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.57
Select abandoned checkout

#37985089782003
10:27 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.55
Select abandoned checkout

#37984987349235
10:13 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.80
Select abandoned checkout

#37984936788211
10:06 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.43
Select abandoned checkout

#37984621035763
9:27 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.32
Select abandoned checkout

#37984210649331
8:26 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.46
Select abandoned checkout

#37984144294131
8:17 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.32
Select abandoned checkout

#37984113885427
8:12 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.12
Select abandoned checkout

#37983767068915
7:18 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.12
Select abandoned checkout

#37983646646515
7:02 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.32
Select abandoned checkout

#37983622889715
6:58 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.12
Select abandoned checkout

#37983571935475
6:50 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.80
Select abandoned checkout

#37983560564979
6:49 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.80
Select abandoned checkout

#37983496241395
6:40 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.09
Select abandoned checkout

#37983362121971
6:22 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.32
Select abandoned checkout

#37983355175155
6:21 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.80
Select abandoned checkout

#37983295668467
6:14 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.80
Select abandoned checkout

#37983057641715
5:42 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.32
Select abandoned checkout

#37982867882227
5:13 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.32
Select abandoned checkout

#37982853988595
5:11 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.32
Select abandoned checkout

#37982757454067
4:56 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.67
Select abandoned checkout

#37982722621683
4:51 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.32
Select abandoned checkout

#37982683005171
4:45 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.32
Select abandoned checkout

#37982675501299
4:44 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.09
Select abandoned checkout

#37982403887347
4:03 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.96
Select abandoned checkout

#37982292082931
3:46 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.48
Select abandoned checkout

#37982252564723
3:39 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.25
Select abandoned checkout

#37982062903539
3:13 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.32
Select abandoned checkout

#37982014177523
3:07 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.32
Select abandoned checkout

#37981904863475
2:52 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.55
Select abandoned checkout

#37981523312883
2:02 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.55
Select abandoned checkout

#37981509812467
2:00 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.09
Select abandoned checkout

#37981398827251
1:45 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.46
Select abandoned checkout

#37981335126259
1:38 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.32
Select abandoned checkout

#37981306093811
1:34 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.55
Select abandoned checkout

#37981270737139
1:29 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.80
Select abandoned checkout

#37981008756979
12:51 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.09
Select abandoned checkout

#37980906225907
12:37 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.46
Select abandoned checkout

#37980790784243
12:22 am
United States
Not Recovered

$14.46
1-50

2

That pattern looks like a bot that’s probing shipping rates rather than card testing, so the quickest sanity check is to temporarily disable the cheap SKU or hide it from online channels to see if the surge stops. I’d also add a Flow that flags repeat checkouts from the same IP or user agent in a short window so you can auto-tag and bulk delete them instead of letting the list grow. Turning on Checkout Extensibility’s reCAPTCHA or the new bot detection in Shopify Protect will slow the script without hurting real shoppers, and pairing that with rate limits on the add-to-cart endpoint usually clears these waves within a day. Once things calm down, consider moving the cheap add-on into a draft channel and only exposing it via bundles so it doesn’t act like bait again.

3

We ran into something similar recently where a large number of checkouts were created with different names and emails but the same low-value item.

In our case it turned out to be automated traffic hitting the checkout endpoint rather than real customers.

One thing that helped us diagnose it faster was aggregating activity at the customer or pattern level instead of looking at individual abandoned carts — for example repeated carts with:

same product
similar cart value
different emails
no payment attempts

When we looked at the pattern across dozens of checkouts it became clear it wasn’t real shopper behavior.

Curious if anyone else here has seen waves of automated checkout attempts like this recently.

5

Hit us a few times in the past month or two. Today we were hit especially hard.

6

Have you got Cloudflare set up? They offer some protection

7

Can you explain the cloudflare setup?

9

For Cloudflare, the setup that helps most here is a combination of Bot Fight Mode (free, under Security → Bots) and a custom WAF rule that challenges or blocks requests hitting your checkout URL at high frequency from the same IP range. The key is rate limiting at the checkout endpoint specifically, not just the homepage.

One thing worth adding on the email side: even after you block the bot traffic, scrub your abandoned cart list. Any email addresses collected during the bot wave are either fake or harvested, and sending to them will hurt your sender reputation and deliverability. Filter out any address that came in during the spike window before your next recovery campaign goes out.

10

This sounds like bot traffic rather than real abandoned carts, especially if it’s always the same item and hitting every few minutes. A few things to check beyond the Cloudflare setup mentioned:

Look at the customer info on those checkouts. If the email addresses look randomly generated or use the same domain pattern, that confirms bots. In Shopify admin, check if these abandoned checkouts have no browsing history before the cart add, that’s a strong bot signal too.

For the app side, make sure you have a checkbox or basic captcha if you’re using any custom checkout extensions. Also check Settings > Checkout for “Require customers to enter phone number” which can filter out some bot traffic since bots often skip fields requiring more input.

On the Cloudflare side, also try setting a rate limit rule specifically on /cart/add.js since that’s usually the endpoint bots hit repeatedly before checkout.

Separate note, fair warning this one is mine, I built a free app called Revenix Cart Upsell that adds cart drawer upsells and a shipping progress bar. Not related to your bot issue, just mentioning it since you’re clearly focused on cart optimization: Revenix Cart Upsell