How to block fake sign-ups and chargeback fraud | Email Hippo

Big day for us today. We’re launching ASSESS. It’s our new product that’s a fraud prevention solution. It will protect businesses in all sectors from fraudulent and risky sign-ups at the first point of contact.

ASSESS is the latest offering in our service portfolio that helps businesses from start-up to enterprise level detect fraud BEFORE it takes place and save their business from the costs associated with dealing with the impact of fraud.

Prevention is always better than cure

That’s what ASSESS is all about. Saving businesses form the expense, time and distraction involved with having to deal with fraud. I’m talking about the fraud that might be a financial transaction - plain theft, or it might be using resources for free, taking out multiple free trials, or getting spam and bot access to business systems with malicious intent.

It’s not designed to entirely replace established fraud systems that provide fraud detection and mitigation services. There are some fabulous fraud systems out there, but they come at a relatively high cost. Many of them are prohibitive for businesses that don't have multi-million dollar turnovers. What ASSESS is designed to do is narrow the funnel of fraud for every business, regardless of size or sector.  If you can reduce the volume of risky transactions in a cost effective, timely way, then you also reduce the amount of time and expense further down the line.

How a Trust Score reduces business risk and reduces fraud

We’ve taken all we have learned about stopping fraud effectively for the last five years, and applied it to ASSESS.  It revolves around the Email Hippo ASSESS Trust Score - and that’s built on the success of the system that helped us receive the top business award in the UK for innovation. Our customers value the Trust Score. It simplifies complex results and gives them a way to take action quickly. 

It’s great to be writing this, especially as we’ve been developing ASSESS during a period of time when online sales are growing and online fraud is evolving in ways that personally, I find deplorable. It troubles me that at a time we all need to pull together and grow our economies, there are people determined to undermine online business.

I’m really interested in hearing your thoughts and feedback. If you’d like to take a look at ASSESS that’s great. Please ask the sales team about getting an API key.

How to prevent fake accounts and chargeback scams

Inevitably businesses will find ways to use ASSESS that we hadn’t imagined. Here are some scenarios that will give you an idea of how it can integrate into your processes.  

• blocking sign-ups from identities that have high-risk characteristics. For example if the domain in the email address has only been registered for a few days, it’s wise to block it as fraudsters often create websites in order to look credible and gain access to systems.
• preventing bogus account creation when applicants have low quality email addresses that contain gibberish or profanity. These indicate users creating multiple accounts, or seeking free resources without intent of becoming a ‘real’ customer. An example of this would be as a use for companies that provide online quotes and need to recognise intent to buy as opposed to time-wasting price comparisons or spam applications.
• Challenging ‘check out as guest’ sign-ups where the declared location and currency of the user don’t match the result given by the ASSESS check. This pre-fraud action before an attempt at payment will reduce costs and risks for any business trading online.
• Preventing disposable email addresses being accepted onto systems, as disposable email addresses often signify fraudulent intent. Companies that are a target for ‘friendly’ fraud will see a reduction in chargebacks and refund fraud when they begin to block transactions from people using disposable email addresses.