What is a Fraud Score and how do I check it?
24.02.24
Imagine you are purchasing a dream of many years - an expensive car. It is important to realise that the comfort of your ride depends significantly on the quality of the fuel you use. Filling your car with dirty petrol can lead to undesirable consequences - from deterioration of performance to the need for serious repairs.
The same critical approach should be applied when choosing a proxy for your work - its "cleanliness" is of key importance for stable and safe operation. That's why today we're going to take a look at Fraud Score and why it's extremely important when checking and selecting reliable proxies.
What is Fraud Score?
Fraud Score is a rating that indicates the level of "dirtiness" of a proxy IP address, fraud rating, anti-reputation rating of trust in proxies. The higher the Fraud Score, the greater the chance to get rejected registration, captcha, confirmation by sms or account ban.
Fraud Score verification by anti-fraud systems
Every time you register on a website, make a purchase, enter personal information or send an email, antifraud systems score these actions. Based on your activity, they update the Fraud Score assigned to your IP address. This is a systematic analysis of your online transactions to determine the level of trust in your IP.
On the other hand, anti-fraud systems also check if the existing Fraud Score of your IP is already too high, which may lead to the application of various restrictions or even sanctions. Modern anti-fraud systems can analyse more than 50 different indicators - from participation in botnet networks to spam emails and automatic registrations. If suspicious activity is detected, the system can automatically raise the Fraud Score of your IP address.
How to check your Fraud Score
If you want to check the Fraud Score of your proxy, here are a few services designed for this purpose :
- Detect.Expert, an online proxy checker, offers one of the most detailed checks with a user-friendly interface and affordable prices.
- Ipqualityscore;
- TreatMetrix;
- CyberSource for financial transactions.
Apart from the aforementioned, there are other online proxy verification services, but their quality often leaves much to be desired. While the services of Ipqualityscore, TreatMetrix and CyberSource can cost you anywhere from $4000 to $10000, Detect.Expert offers a high quality IP verification service for a reasonable fee.
When testing proxies, it is important to remember that Fraud Score is not a static parameter and can change over time depending on your online activities. For example, an IP address 67.58.226.127 may receive a Fraud Score of 80 for engaging in suspicious activity, but over time, if it is seen only in legitimate activity, its rating may improve to 60 or even 50. It can also happen that addresses are inadvertently blacklisted and then removed from blacklists. It is also important to realise that assigning an IP address to a new device has no effect on its Fraud Score.
What to do in case of a high Fraud Score
If your proxy has a high Fraud Score, you should take the following steps:
- Try to change the IP address of the proxy with your ISP.
- Check your proxy with other proxy checkers
- Ask your proxy provider to make a replacement for you
Optimal Fraud Score
To work with financial systems and large online marketplaces such as Amazon, Ebay, Walmart, Google, Apple, the Fraud Score should be below 20. For less demanding tasks it is acceptable to use proxies with a higher Fraud Score. In any case, IP addresses with Fraud Score above 60 should be avoided.
Why LTE (mobile) proxies often have a lower Fraud Score than resident proxies
Mobile proxies often have a lower Fraud Score than resident proxies. The main reason for this is the dynamic IP. Mobile operators regularly rotate IP addresses between users, making it difficult to identify specific undesirable patterns of behaviour on individual IPs. This makes them less susceptible to "contamination" and, as a result, have a lower Fraud Score.
In turn, resident proxies are usually IP addresses of ordinary home Internet users, whose devices can be used by attackers for illegal activities (spam, viruses, Ddos attacks, etc.). That is why IP addresses of resident proxies may be more often included in the blacklists of anti-fraud systems than IP addresses of LTE proxies.
Conclusion
Remember that using a reliable proxy with an acceptable Fraud Score is like fuelling a car with quality fuel. So try to always test each of your proxies before using them. If you want to ensure safe and stable operation, choose a proxy from Detect.Expert with high speed and lowest Fraud Score.
P.S. This article opens a whole series of materials devoted to various proxy checkers. Stay tuned for more updates!
