Proxy Detection is a critical component of online fraud detection applications. Sophisticated fraudsters may bypass geolocation controls by using proxies to spoof their IP address and location. Proxy Detection is necessary to detect such spoofing.

For example, say a credit card fraudster located in Nigeria attempts to purchase goods online with a stolen credit card having a New York billing address. If the merchant uses geolocation data to block orders from Nigeria and other high risk countries and also matches up the billing location with the IP address location, the fraudster may still bypass these checks by routing his order through a proxy located in New York. The IP address location would appear to be legitimate since it is in the same city as the billing address. A proxy check would be needed to flag this order.

Besides payment fraud, proxy checking is needed for any application where IP geolocation is used to authenticate online transactions, to protect from IP address spoofing.

To learn more, read about IP Authentication with IP Geolocation and Proxy Detection.

For detecting additional online fraud or abuse, we recommend using the minFraud or proxy detection web services, which both detect both anonymous and open proxies. Open proxies are compromised computers that allow traffic to be routed through them.

Proxy Detection queries
This service returns a proxyScore indicating whether an IP address is a known anonymous or open proxy server.
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