Wednesday, August 13, 2008

How IP Address Detection Works

Category: Finance.

Any high risk merchant should be aware, if not become thoroughly an expert, of all the technical aspects of credit card transactions.



Smart merchants would never plunge headlong into online ventures without a good, working knowledge of the loopholes of the billing process via credit cards. Let's face it, doing business online is taking risk a hundred times more dangerous than doing business the brick and mortar fashion. High risk merchant account providers employ various tactics to mitigate the frequency of chargebacks such as restriction on the use of anonymous e- mail addresses, IP address detection, credit card validation, and proxy server identification. They would make sure email address, zip code, phone number, credit card, mailing/ shipping address and other forms of identification are valid. Anonymous E- mail Addresses. It's rather commonplace to hear that if you were dealing with credit cards, it would be unwise to accept credit card owners that provide anonymous or free e- mail addresses such as@ yahoo. com, @hotmail. com, or@ gmail. com. All low risk and high risk merchants are required to integrate a credit card validation system with the customer's issuing bank.


Credit Card Validation and Other Issues. To make it even foolproof, merchants would double check for phone number and zip code authenticity, as well as compatibility with the customer's billing address and issuing bank's country. How IP Address Detection Works. Some would even make sure they are not doing transactions with customers that originate from high risk countries. Merchants, will find even, however better benefit in taking advantage of detecting the IP addresses of their customers. As a matter of fact, legitimate buyers would most welcome security measures such as IP geolocation from high risk merchant account providers to protect them from credit card fraud. Security is a tall order when it comes to buying and selling online.


Scammers would hide behind anonymous e- mail addresses and proxy servers. The process goes as following: Merchants detect IP address using geolocation technology and IP validation technology. The most that high risk merchants can do is to filter suspicious IP addresses. It may be categorized by country, area code or, zip code billing address. Merchants analyze, and filter legitimate, double check transactions and illegitimate transactions. The geolocation/ IP validation technology identifies where the user is located spot- on and compares where the person making order is located and his actual billing address.


They may also block transactions considered as possible frauds, or transactions originating from fraud- prone high risk countries. IP address detection also goes hand in hand with proxy server identification. Proxy Server Identification. Merchants may find difficulty in detecting IP addresses if customers hide behind anonymous proxy servers. A proxy server facilitates network performance by making use of a caching system. What is a Proxy Server?


The cache is a temporary storage for data that have been viewed recently( like a brain's short term memory) . Another is to help network administrators filter sites that they deem other users of the network must not access. The purpose is to prevent data such as web pages and images from being downloaded repeatedly, thus saving time on accessing them online. Detecting IP addresses and proxy servers can be tricky. This is because anonymous proxy servers cannot be detected consistently. A strong support from a high risk merchant account providers that employs strong IP and proxy server detection technology will help your e- commerce store counteract frauds. With the help of a reliable IP and proxy server detection technology, a merchant will have less time for worries and more time for finding more solutions to increase profit for his business.

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