Articles

How to Combat E-commerce Fraud Using an IP Geolocation Database

Posted by db-ip on 2019 Nov 30

Combating Fraud Online

Digital commerce has been a significant benefit to society. It has allowed millions of people to lift themselves out of poverty and has made it easy for anyone to buy everything they want from the comfort of their home. It has also had a big downside in the way people do business.

Digital commerce is vulnerable in ways that going to a brick-and-mortar store aren't. For example, an e-commerce store website can be hacked, and all customer data can fall into the wrong hands. Your identity can be stolen online and be used to commit awful cyber crimes. With the rise of digital commerce, fraud is becoming a big issue, and this is something that businesses must think about when operating on a day-to-day basis.

How Fraud Ruins Businesses

Fraud can be devastating for business. You work hard, spend your time trying to please customers, and then it is all taken away from you by people attempting to defraud you. It can be a significant hindrance for a company trying to grow and become better. It is also a significant issue if your company has a small margin, and you are unable to make up for lost profits.

The essential part of doing business is, being able to get profits that you can reinvest back into the business. The lost revenue can have a devastating effect on the morale of the person running the business. It is more than just the money lost that causes problems. The other big issue is the motivation to continue working, knowing that fraud and abuse will cause you to lose a significant portion of what you are earning. Having money scraped from the top of your profit margin will cause even the most confident business owner to become more pessimistic.

Fraud affects online businesses differently, depending on the type of business you own. For example, a company doing online advertising will have more fraud than other businesses. It is relatively easy to make a program that can reliably click on your advertisement, costing you money while not being a valid user. The most important thing for you to do is to find ways of contracting this fraud and protecting your business from abuse.

Where Is Fraud Coming From?

The source of fraud will depend highly on what type of business you have. Certain businesses are more prone than others, and if you are unlucky to have a company that is prone to fraud, you must invest in countermeasures to protect yourself. The most prone business is always going to be advertising.

There have been instances where multimillion-dollar fraud networks were found and destroyed by the authorities. These networks were simply servers in the cloud that pretended to be legitimate users and clicked on video advertisements. They were built with open source tools, and people use them to create their web browser that could act like a real human. Fraud like this is quite common but at a lower level. You never hear about these types of fraud because they are quite small compared to things like a giant Ponzi scheme, or another kind of fraud that gets media attention. You are most vulnerable to fraud if a scalable method can be created to automate doing an action that will cost you money.

Fraud usually comes from countries where Internet hacking is ubiquitous. Areas such as this are prone to these things happening.

Who Is Vulnerable to Fraud?

Being vulnerable to fraud can be a horrible feeling. Knowing that someone could destroy your business will leave even the most confident person in a heap of sweat. The most crucial part of protecting yourself from fraud is knowing where you're vulnerable. You are susceptible to fraud if you don't have methods of protecting your server and your infrastructure. You are also vulnerable if you don't have the necessary software tools to fight against hackers and other people trying to get into your system. These people are usually bad actors who will use whatever method possible to infiltrate and cash in on your system.

What Should You Be Doing to Prevent It?

The first step to preventing fraud is to create software solutions to help you. Getting useful network intelligence software and using the best IP geolocation database is something you can get to keep you safe and protected. A geolocation database will allow you to find detailed information about where the person trying to hack you is located. This enables you to get general information about the location of hackers, and you can shut it down like that. If you have no idea where hacks are coming from, you don't have the necessary information to start fighting back. You can do many things to fight back once you understand the origin of the hack. For example, you can block IP addresses from the entire country once you have found that country, which is responsible for the hacks happening to you. This can seem like an extreme response, but when your money is on the line, nothing should be off-limits.

Fraud in E-Commerce

Having the best IP geolocation database will also help in fighting fraud with your e-commerce website. You will get an idea of where fraudulent purchases are coming from, and you can also see who is trying to log into your server. Watching server logs is a great way to understand what is going on while you are on the Internet. It will also show you where the threats are coming from and with effective network intelligence tools, provide the first step in helping you lock things down. Having a safe and secure e-commerce website is critical to gaining trust, especially if you are not a big website like Amazon or eBay. In e-commerce, you are competing with some of the most prominent players in the industry, and your reputation is everything. Someone learning that you have been hacked will most often automatically disqualify you from getting their business.

Protecting Your Online Store from Fraud

There are many effective software programs to protect you from fraud. One of the simplest and easiest ways to start protecting yourself is to get an SSL key. Having your site secured with encryption will automatically make you more trustworthy in the eyes of potential customers. The encryption is almost impossible to be, and it is something that most hackers can't get around. This type of encryption technology is an essential part of defeating hackers. Having the best IP geolocation database imaginable will also help you solve any problems that will come up. You can be sure that there will always be problems cropping up in this fast-paced world. You must understand you are going up against some of the smart and intelligent individuals trying to misuse. These people have years of experience hacking and penetrating systems, and they will be doing everything possible to get into yours.

Using Geolocation to Help Fight Fraud

Being able to know where someone is located is a huge step in fighting against online fraud. A geolocation database is one of the tools you can use to combat fraud. And having the best IP geolocation database will make sure you stay on top. You also have reliable machine learning algorithms that can assist you in finding threats and solutions. One of the most significant ways that fraud can hurt you is the fact that you don't know where it is coming from. There also many sources of fraud in the e-commerce world. When all these things come together, you often have no idea what to do, as it will feel overwhelming to have to tackle everything at the same time. Making sure that people don't stay anonymous when shopping on your website can also be a considerable solution. You can also focus on making sure people use effective payment methods that cannot be hacked.

Other Software Tools to Use

Network analysis tools are becoming more critical than ever. You also have access to data mining tools that can scan your logs and see any issues that arise. On the Internet, everything generates data. This data can be parsed and analyzed by putting them into models. You can use these models to figure out what your next step will be. In the end, the most important thing for you is to fight fraud and have a business that grows strong and is profitable. Using every tactic imaginable to combat fraud will assist you in getting to the results you want.

Getting Your IP Database

When it comes to geolocation and its importance, you want to have something like DB-IP to help you beat the competition. Having an effective geolocation database is a critical part of fighting against fraud and protecting yourself online.

Comments