Although it's frustrating, spam accounts being created on your site are generally no cause for concern. Although there is no monetary penalty from Uscreen for these spam accounts, we encourage you to delete them before the accounts get charged to avoid chargebacks, fees, and problems with the payment provider.
Why do Spam accounts get created?
Across the internet, bad actors take stolen credit card information and will typically test those credit cards on random websites to see if they're valid or not. Unfortunately, this may mean that from time to time you encounter these fraud bot tests.
While Uscreen has protections in place, no protections today can 100% block these bots. We recommend that you enable Block Rules via Stripe to help with this. Please see this article for more information.
What are some of the ways that Uscreen tries and limit bots?
We use reCaptcha on checkout pages, particularly for Gift Card purchases which is a common source of bot purchases.
We employ an email verification process for gift card purchases which requires verification of emails before a purchase can be completed.
We employ email and IP detections to block spammy-looking purchases.
Spam accounts with no payment information
You can delete the spam accounts manually or provide us with a CSV export of the accounts you want to have deleted in bulk. Please, reach out to us if you wish to have help deleting them. Bulk requests of this nature can take up to 7-10 business days to be fulfilled. Please, follow these directions to obtain a CSV export of those accounts.
Spam accounts with payment information
You can also find random accounts being created with credit cards associated. In this case, someone is likely trying to test stolen credit cards. It means you want to act fast, but no need to panic!
We're happy to help delete the subscriptions, card information, and accounts. We will also issue refunds to any of the cards that were charged (in case your subscriptions did not have trials or if one-time transactions were completed). All you need to do is provide us with a CSV export of the accounts you want to have deleted in bulk. As mentioned above, you can reach us from your dashboard.
NOTE: If you use Stripe, we strongly recommend enabling more stringent anti-fraud options, such as setting up Stripe Radar Rules. With this feature, you can create rules specific to your business or use Stripe's built-in rules that allow you to take action when a payment matches the criteria that you define. You can enable this feature by logging in to your Stripe account and going to the Radar Settings. You can find more information about Stripe Radar Rules here or you may contact Stripe directly.
You can also enable block rules in Stripe, for free. These block rules help reduce bot attacks that test stolen credit card information.
You can enable those block rules here. We recommend enabling CVC and Zip Code block rules.
In addition, if, while in Stripe, you notice that the fraud accounts are coming from a specific country where you do not expect to sell content, you could geo-block your site for that country.
Create a CSV of spam account information
To get the CSV report, you should navigate to the People tab, then under the second People tab, click on Export CSV. In the file, you can filter or delete all valid rows so only spam accounts will remain.
