The Top Tricks Fraudsters Use To Disguise Their Identity
As an E-Commerce store owner, there’s nothing more frustrating then getting declined orders, and chargebacks. You spend months perfecting your website and work daily on your products just to be scammed out of them by fraudsters looking for a quick money fix.
E-Commerce fraud is a serious industry, claiming billions of dollars from store owners, year after year. These fraud attacks lead to all sorts of problems, including chargebacks, identity theft, declined orders, information theft, and more.
While every fraud attack is different in one way or another, they all share one similar trait. The fraudster is using an identity spoofing service to conceal some part of their digital footprint.
We’ll be talking about which services and tools fraudsters use most often, as well as the easiest way to protect and fight back against them.
Disposable Email Services
A huge red flag for fraudulent orders is if the customer is using a disposable email service to sign up to your website or confirm their order. Disposable email services offer users temporary email addresses, which partially conceals their identity.
This is often used in conjunction with a VPN or other identity spoofing tools. It’s important to have some type of email verification tool set in place, to verify what service it’s with (or isn’t with), as well as the deliverability of the email, and if any dangerous honeypots are detected.
VPN/Proxies
Virtual Private Networks (VPN’s) and Proxies, are tools used 95% of the time fraud attacks are being attempted.
As a general explanation, they change the users IP to somewhere else in the world to better conceal their identity — So the digital footprint they leave is being deleted as they browse..
This is clearly dangerous to E-Commerce stores for many reasons. One, you won’t know who is actually ordering from your store. Two, it can be much more difficult to detect and report chargebacks, and identity theft without the proper online security tools.
How To Fight Back
Thankfully, there are a variety of tools out there designed specifically to fight back against these identity spoofing strategies, so you’ll always know who’s placing orders and visiting your store.
Email Verification Tools
Email fraud not only will lower your conversion and deliverability rate, but also could potentially mean harm for your website and your users data. By installing and regularly using email verification tools, you’ll be able to:
- Verify the existence of a email address inbox with the mail service provider.
- Detect if an email address belongs to a temporary or disposable email service (These are commonly used by fraudsters).
- Extract other useful data, like the status of deliverability, and usage rates.
VPN/Proxy Blocking Tools
Nearly all digital fraud attacks against E-Commerce stores are aided by identity spoofing tools like VPN’s and Proxies. These tools mask the real IP address and location of users, so they can go about performing fraudulent activities.
By identifying and monitoring for these poor traffic sources, you’ll be able to reduce chargebacks, reversal rates, and click fraud. This one simple step alone could save you thousands per year.
Conclusion
In 2020 and beyond, it’s crucial to the security of your business and customers, to keep a watchful eye out for online fraud attacks.
By understanding the techniques and strategies that fraudsters use, like the ones explained in this article, you’ll have a better idea of what to look out for, and how to put an end to it for good.
Combined with using the tools and resources mentioned, you can say goodbye to dealing with any more chargeback or declined order headaches.
operations & marketing. cofounder @hoo.be / @ImMakingADifference
