Forum Moderators: buckworks
Is it possible to block african traffic by IP? What's it called, Geo Targetting or something? What's a good company that offers this?
There are stacks of perl and php scripts with GeoLocator dbs to be attached (for a price) out there - try Google.
With specific regard to your problem one simple solution would be don't ship where the billing address is not even on the same continent as the shipping address ;)
IMHO IP blocking has limited use other than removing casual fraudsters... the heavies know how to on-ramp via a local provider to make it seem they are connecting from a local IP range.
The devil is in the ship-to address. If you're selling anything remotely desirable to poorer countries (from experience auto parts, printer toner cartridges, PC's or PC kit) then you may want to consider a "delivery only to validated addresses" caveat on your order page and use Bank AVS and/or third party scoring to help you make a decision.
Hope this helps
Hope this helps
Only problem is that those huge fraudulent orders sometimes mess up our stats program.
Otherwise I kind of like 'em. I know that some of our competitors DO fall for those obvious scams.
Jerjhe JKHJKH
jdfhdjh jkhkjh
jhkjhkj, CA 99999
Or even the stolen card owners real USA address. They are doing this for no reason other than to be annoying. I wish I could see these people face to face to end it real quick.
The only IP service company I found was quovo. Any ideas? I have IP ranges of these fraudsters.
Why kind of cart are you using? Perhaps they are testing it. I really doubt they are playing games merely to bother you.
I do know that Nigerians will "mark" bulletin boards with code phrases to indicate they have "harvested" the email addresses on the board. They want other Nigerian fraudsters to stay away. Those emails are used in Nigerian Letter Scams.
Then a couple of months later, the real cardholder charged it back - it was a stolen card. No wonder the billing address was okay.
Here's the rub: the ship to address was a mail-forwarder business. They receive packages and send them out again. I don't remember the name of the business, but their website claim that many of their customers live abroad and would like to be able to get packages in the US.
Wonder how many of their customers are scammers...
Install mod_geoip and configure your httpd.conf (or .htaccess) with :-
GeoIPEnable On
GeoIPDBFile /path/to/GeoIP.dat
#To block Nigeria
SetEnvIf GEOIP_COUNTRY_CODE NG BlockCountry
Deny from env=BlockCountry
No you guys aren't understanding me. I don't ship to any suspicious countries. But they still are ordering with addresses such as...Jerjhe JKHJKH
jdfhdjh jkhkjh
jhkjhkj, CA 99999
Have exactly the same problem every week, drives me nuts. Nearly all the IPs resolve to Lagos, funnily enough...
one of the main guards against fraud (in any country) is that if an order seems too good to be true, then it probably is.
The danger is that you *might* end up blocking more than you intended, but it's a minor price to pay. I can't imagine any reason someone in Nigeria needs to even *see* my web site, let alone place an order on it.
That's classic!
First have the data base from Geo targeting redirect any one from a list of chosen countries sent to a page on our site which says our site is down. This way they will think something is wrong with our site and not come back. It seems to work as there is less trafic now from those countires.
Second, when we prosses an order, all the info from Geo Targeting is included in the order. This way we can reject the order if a few fraudsters have sliped by. Also since we ship world wide, its nice to compare if the countries are correct. Example, an order from Sweden but comes from Peru. In that case of course we don't ship.
Lastly, from the 'submit a question' boxes on our site, the Geo Targeting info is included. So if someone asks a question about a product on our site and they are from Indonesia, we know not to reply.
Hope that helps
Nigeria
Ghana
Ukraine
Indonesia
Yugoslavia
Lithuania
Egypt
Romania
Bulgaria
Turkey
Russia
Pakistan
Malaysia
Morrocco
Nigeria boasts one of the most corrupt governments in the world. With this, and other economic factors, they are debt ridden and many people are unemployed or make very little.
This is what makes theft such a lucrative industry. Not to mention that Nigeria has one of the more profitible black markets for items purchased from the US. It is believed that 70% of all imports into Nigeria is done so illegally.
There is also nothing that can stop any of this from taking place. Although the government has claimed to hammer down on such crimes, there is little enforcement. Those that are enforced receive a slap on the wrist and never result in jail time.
Blocking IPs won't stop this completely. They are smart enough to nab credit cards, and they are smart enough to switch IP addresses. They will typically place 3-4 orders at once from multiple IP addresses around the globe.
The best security is a solid verification system. Besides basic address verification, throw up flags for individuals making large orders, originating from free e-mail address, suspect vowel count, and anything else suspicious.
These should be followed up with phone calls, and you'll find 99% of these orders will have fake phone numbers attached.
In the past, we've had alot of trouble with Nigerian orders. We've had many an order from Lagos, Sweden. But we purchased an annual service from StoreIQ to block a list of countries that we specify. Haven't had a single Nigerian order since. Plenty of scam e-mails though. I have a Yahoo store so it was easier for me to have someone else take care of this.
We haven't been hit with the freight forwarder as ship-to scam yet. But we don't deal in expensive or hard goods either. Can't see them going to too much trouble for a pretty woman's shirt. Actually, it's extremely rare that anyone orders more than one of an item. Any more than that and we get the "fraud sniffer" out.
[edited by: lorax at 9:17 pm (utc) on Jan. 24, 2005]
[edit reason] generalized biz name [/edit]
