IP fraud lookup online helps businesses minimize the risk of bad actors entering their websites by evaluating an individual user’s risk level. This information can reveal things like whether the user is using a proxy, VPN or TOR to hide their identity and bypass geographic restrictions or if they are in a high risk neighborhood based on other users engaging in SPAM or suspicious behavior.

This is done by running a risk assessment on an individual’s IP address that incorporates data gathered from the user’s location, network type, device information and other factors. Using these data points, an individual’s risk score is calculated that can range from 0 to 100. The higher the score, the more likely it is that a person is a threat actor.

Guarding Against Fraud: Conducting an IP Fraud Lookup Online

These scores are based on previous incidents that indicate possible spam or other forms of abusive behavior such as compromised devices, proxies and more. An IP’s reputation is also impacted by other networks it is associated with including if it belongs to a data center, hosting provider or residential network and if it has been seen in suspicious behavior on other sites that have resulted in a blacklisting of the IP.

These methods can only reveal so much about a user, however. The problem is that a fraudster can change their device or use a proxy to avoid being detected, and it’s impossible to detect all types of fraud based solely on an IP address. By incorporating other common methods of detecting malicious activity such as reverse email lookup, user and device fingerprinting, transaction velocity, and others, businesses can better understand the true threat of each individual user.