Fraud Shield: How Sellvy Protects Your Business

Digital product fraud is a billion-dollar problem. Unlike physical goods where a fraudster needs a shipping address, digital products can be stolen from anywhere in the world with nothing more than a stolen credit card number and a disposable email address. The product gets delivered instantly, the chargeback arrives weeks later, and the seller eats the loss.

We built Fraud Shield because every seller — regardless of plan or revenue — deserves enterprise-grade protection against fraudulent orders.

The Scale of the Problem

Industry reports estimate that digital goods merchants face chargeback rates 2-3x higher than physical goods merchants. A single chargeback does not just mean losing the sale amount. You also pay a dispute fee ($15-25 per incident), spend time gathering evidence for the dispute, and risk having your payment processor flag or terminate your account if your chargeback rate exceeds their threshold (typically 1%).

For a small seller doing $5,000 per month, just five fraudulent orders can push you above that threshold and put your entire business at risk.

How Fraud Shield Works

Fraud Shield analyzes every incoming order against 9 distinct scoring factors, each contributing to a cumulative risk score between 0 and 100. When the score exceeds your configured threshold (default: 70), the order is automatically flagged or blocked depending on your settings.

Here is what we check:

1. VPN and Proxy Detection

Fraudsters almost always hide behind VPNs, proxies, or Tor exit nodes to mask their real location. Fraud Shield checks every order against a comprehensive database of known VPN providers, data center IP ranges, and anonymous proxy services. An order coming through a VPN does not automatically mean fraud, but it adds points to the risk score.

2. Disposable Email Detection

Temporary email services like Guerrilla Mail, Temp Mail, and hundreds of similar providers are a red flag. Legitimate customers use their real email addresses. Fraud Shield maintains a database of over 10,000 disposable email domains and instantly flags orders using them.

3. Country Mismatch Analysis

When the IP geolocation of the buyer does not match the billing country on their payment method, it raises a flag. A customer in Germany paying with a US credit card could be legitimate — they might be traveling — but it significantly elevates the risk profile of the transaction.

4. Velocity Checks

Multiple orders from the same IP address, email prefix, or payment fingerprint within a short time window is a classic fraud pattern. Fraud Shield tracks velocity across all orders on your store and flags unusual bursts of activity. This catches both individual fraudsters testing multiple stolen cards and coordinated fraud rings.

5. Email Age and Reputation

Newly created email addresses used for immediate high-value purchases are suspicious. Fraud Shield evaluates email address patterns, creation timing relative to the order, and cross-references against known fraud databases.

6. Device Fingerprinting

The combination of browser, operating system, screen resolution, timezone, and installed fonts creates a unique device fingerprint. Fraud Shield uses this to identify when the same device places multiple orders with different identities — a strong indicator of fraud.

7. Payment Pattern Analysis

Fraud Shield looks at the payment behavior: how quickly the checkout was completed, whether the customer changed payment methods multiple times, and whether the billing details match known patterns from previous fraudulent transactions across the Sellvy platform.

8. Geolocation Risk Scoring

Certain regions have statistically higher fraud rates. Fraud Shield incorporates geographic risk data without outright blocking any country by default. Instead, orders from higher-risk regions receive additional scrutiny through elevated risk scores that combine with other factors.

9. Behavioral Analysis

How a customer navigates your store before purchasing tells a story. A legitimate customer browses products, reads descriptions, and makes a considered purchase. A fraudster often navigates directly to the checkout with minimal interaction. Fraud Shield monitors these behavioral signals as an additional risk factor.

Configurable Protection

Every seller has different risk tolerance. A seller offering free digital downloads has different needs than someone selling $500 software licenses. Fraud Shield gives you full control:

• Risk Threshold: Set your own score threshold (0-100) for when orders get flagged or blocked. Lower thresholds catch more fraud but may also flag some legitimate orders. Higher thresholds let more orders through but with increased risk.

• Blocked Countries: Completely block orders from specific countries if your business model requires it.

• IP Blacklist: Manually block specific IP addresses that you have identified as problematic.

• Email Blacklist: Block specific email addresses or entire domains from placing orders.

• Action Mode: Choose whether flagged orders are automatically blocked or just flagged for your manual review.

Available on Every Plan

We made a deliberate decision to include Fraud Shield on every Sellvy plan, including free accounts. Fraud does not discriminate based on business size, and neither does our protection. Every seller deserves the tools to protect their revenue.

Real Results

During our beta period, sellers using Fraud Shield saw their chargeback rates drop by an average of 78%. Several sellers who were previously at risk of losing their Stripe accounts due to high chargeback rates brought their dispute rates well below the 1% threshold within weeks of enabling Fraud Shield.

The system processes each order in under 200 milliseconds, so your legitimate customers never notice any delay. Protection happens silently in the background while your store operates at full speed.

Getting Started

Fraud Shield is enabled by default on every Sellvy store. You can customize your settings in the dashboard under Settings, then Fraud Shield. We recommend starting with the default threshold of 70 and adjusting based on your specific experience.

Your business should not have to choose between growing fast and staying protected. With Fraud Shield, you get both.

Start selling with confidence — Fraud Shield has your back from day one.