Setting up FraudGuardian

FraudGuardian is a tool we developed to help you screen incoming orders to help reduce the costs of fraud. Contrary to the name, FraudGuardian does not screen for fraud. Instead, it looks for orders that are probably not fraud and automatically approves them, helping to automate your business one step further. Without FraudGuardian, all incoming orders are set to pending so that you can inspect them yourself before approving them and setting the client status to active. For a larger discussion of fraud in the hosting industry, please read this.

You can sign up for a FraudGuardian account here. Once you've done that, you just need to enable the module, then configure it. There are two main parts to configuring FraudGuardian: Fraud Sets and Thresholds.

Thresholds

Thresholds are your way of telling the system what variables you do and don't want, and how badly you do and don't want them. For example, you may decide that free email is something you don't mind, and assign it zero points. But it may be that you don't want anyone coming through a proxy, and so assign this ten points. You also set how many points a client can have, and what behavior the system will take depending on the points total assigned to each incoming client. These options are discussed in greater detail in the field explanations below.

Creating a Threshold

You can have a single threshold, where all new clients have the same standards applied to them, or create various different thresholds depending on countries or regions. To create a new threshold, enter a name for the threshold in the field and choose to apply to ALL countries, ONE country, or a REGION of coutries. Then click "define new country threshold." You will see this threshold appear as part of a list under "Current Country Thresholds." To set your parameters for this threshold, click "Configure."

Configure Fraud Score Threshold Actions

This section allows you to set the system behavior based on a client's final score.

Score 1:

Normally, you will want to set an action for approving clients with very low scores. Low scores indicate that it's unlikely the client is fraudulent. The action "Active With Auth Capture" means that as soon as this client has paid their signup invoice, they will be set to active. Set the highest score you would want to allow for clients to be approved as long as they pay.

Score 2:

Clients who score too high to safely qualify as not fraudulent, but who aren't high enough to necessarily be fraud, can be set to pending so that you can approve them manually. We recommend setting Score 2 to Pending With Auth Capture. Then choose the highest score you're willing to accept into the billing system.

Score 3:

The next level of score is usually set to Soft Reject. Clients meeting the Soft Reject score will not be able to proceed through to the final checkout page, and instead will have a message displayed. The message they see is something that you enter yourself. It usually includes something letting the client know there is a potential problem with their account information, and asking them to contact sales or support, depending on how you want to handle this. Set this number to the maximum score you're willing to even consider for a client.

Socre 4:

Score 4 is usually set to Hard Reject. Clients with a score that meets or exceeds the number you enter for this level, if set to Hard Reject, will see your Hard Reject message. This is usually set to something letting the client know that you've identified them as fraud and are not interested in their business. Like the soft reject message, the content of the message can be set to whatever you would like it to be.

Configure Amount Override Threshold Actions

One of the common tactics employed by fraudsters is to charge as much as possible once they find a card that is live. It might be possible that the client's billing account and address information matches well enough to not stand out as being fraud, but the amount they are purchasing is. For example, if a fraudster steals a card from someone in the same town, the system may not be able to tell that this is not who they say they are. But if the fraudster is trying to charge $500 worth of hosting, that might tip you off that something is amiss (depending on how much you charge for hosting). Like the section above, you can set three differetn set of actions based on the amout being charged. For example:

Amount 1:

Say you sell hosting for $20 a month, and your average client buys two packages and a couple of domains. The total sale will then usually be less than $100. If you set this amount to $100 and the action to Pending with Auth Capture, then any client who is buying more than $100 of services will be set to pending in your system. This will give you a chance to look the order over before approving it.

Amount 2: and Amount 3:

Like the Amount 1 setting, you can choose to set thresholds for these as well. For example, you may decide that anyone trying to buy $1000 worth of hosting from you is obviously not on the up and up, and want to set this to hard reject. You may also decide that any order over $200 might be legitimate, but that such a client probably needs special attention. If you set this to soft reject, these clients will be encourage to contact you directly for their sale.

Adjust Fraud Score Triggers

ModernBill uses what it calls Fraud Socre Triggers to assign points to incoming client accounts in order to determine whether or not the order is likely to be legitimate. The system has these triggers set to default values upon installation, but you are free to adjust them as you like. For example, you may decide that you don't care if the client's IP matches their country for billing purposes. In that case you can set this value to 0 instead of the default: 2.5.

Soft Rejection Message

This is the message that will be displayed to people who trigger your soft rejection notice for this threshold.

Hard Rejection Message

This is the message that will be displayed to people who trigger your hard rejection notice for this threshold.

Fraud Sets

A fraud set is a group of thresholds. The fraud set allows you to tie various thresholds with order forms, and specify the email you wish to have notices sent to. If you are selling in one currency, you will like just need one fraud set, as you will be using a single order form. If, however, you are using multiple order forms because you are selling in multiple currencies, you may want to create a unique fraud set for each order form. It is also possible to have a single threshold apply to several order forms, via the fraud set.