When used in combination with other fraud risk factors, phone number intelligence data can help you minimize fake behaviors entering your site. For example, if the person’s IP is linked to a ping flood or brute force attack, a security tool can detect this and block access from that source. It can also reveal whether a user is hiding behind VPNs, proxy usage, or connections via hosting environments to prevent click fraud, gaming fraud, and content piracy.

It’s important to note that analyzing an IP address doesn’t give merchants enough information to send Interpol knocking on someone’s door and catch them in the act of account takeover fraud or other types of financial scams. However, by leveraging IP analysis as a key part of a larger fraud detection strategy alongside other methods, merchants can reduce fraud and chargeback losses while reducing manual interventions to improve operational efficiency.

Whose Number Is That? The Best Tools for Identifying Callers

Using a free, easy-to-use IP detection service is a great place to start. These tools offer basic IP detection, including geographic location and ISP details. Paid services are generally more reliable and offer a wide range of data that can be used to analyze a risk score for an individual IP address.

In addition to detecting location and ISP details, a good solution can identify whether the IP is linked to a residential or business connection. This can be a useful factor in determining if it’s safe to approve a transaction or not, especially if the IP has been flagged as suspicious previously. It can also be helpful for identifying whether the user is attempting to use a professional anonymizing service or VPN, as this can lead to false positives when it comes to detecting fraud.