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Flagged by maxmind!
Hi All,
I recently tried to sign up for a VPS from a provider I saw on here, I was rejected because my IP has a 'high risk' for fraud. At the time I was using a friends wireless to catch up on some work - I guess he might have been inadvertently running and open proxy or something? I'd heard of MaxMind doing CC fraud prevention, but I didn't even get that far!
Has anyone else run into this problem? Do you know how MaxMind flags IPs? Is there anything I can do to restore my reputation and get myself a nice cheap LEB? 
Thanks in advance,
Dan
(long time reader, 1st time poster...)
Comments
Yes, open support ticket and explain situation. That's the most logic thing to do...
No. Now you have to change your id, look, get a beard and run to Pakistan.
Try again from home
I have plenty of perfectly respectable clients in Pakistan
Well, Pakistan will have +1 respectable man.
Your prejudice has no place here
+1 for contacting your host as I believe they get an error report. Also if you explain to the provider what has occurred, you may be able to get them to override the fraud report. If you have an online presence, providing a link to that may be helpful. I know in the past, I have linked to some of the Open Source support forums that I have helped out on over the years.
Of course the IP address may be flagged for reason. We don't know what your neighbor has been doing online.
Maxmind is extremely optional; it's only there to give it's opinion. It will only block things if you set it to do so. We've had a few people tagged by Maxmind, which were cleared up only when they contacted us, so be sure to contact your host about it.
Most fraud error in my case are the difference from the IP with my location, determine location via IP address will never work in Viet Nam.
I got Paypal verified since 2007, debit card with my name, my address on it but some providers still deny the order
Viet Nam is a whole special can of worms with PayPal, but I've not seen anything marked as extra risky by MaxMind
We get some people marked by MaxMind, we usually just do a phone call to clear it all up. Not a big deal
Just a support ticket solves this issue 99.9% of the time.
If MaxMind marks their country as high risk we do not accept them at all. They do not mark specific IPs as high risk in their automated system, only countries (although we have received e-mails from them about specific IPs that generate high levels of fraud, but it's never in their automated system). That's our policy but for all other fraud alerts, we will review them if a client opens a ticket.
For the record, here's what MaxMind says about high risk countries:
High-Risk Countries are countries from which a disproportionately large number of fraudulent orders originate. In an effort to fight fraud, we flag these transactions as higher risk, to make sure that any other abnormalities in the transaction do not go unnoticed. Our list of high-risk countries include Nigeria, Romania, and Vietnam, among others.
It's sad to see my country in High risk countries list
It's sad that they even have to make such a list.
Thanks for the comments - I have opened a ticket with the provider but its looking like for the sake of a few bucks a month they aren't willing to give me the chance to do anything about it, which is disappointing. I'm basically getting 'maxmind doesn't like you, so neither do I' from them. I guess the best I can do is try to make sure I don't get flagged when I try somewhere else
I'm in the UK so if its country-based discrimination that's quite surprising. If DotVPS is right about the 40km limit then there's very little chance of it working in the UK - most IP blocks over here seem to GeoIP to the ISP's location rather than the customers's - both of these could be anywhere in the country so the chance of getting within 40km is pretty low!
@tehdan Would they allow you to redo the order when you get home on your own connection?
@SSDNodes thanks - that's my last chance which I'm trying now.
I didn't want to offer it immediately for fear of looking like a scammer who'd found a better proxy that I thought might get around their checks
Fortunately I remembered my ISP lists my name as contact in WHOIS for my static IP block - maybe this will give them some extra assurance?
I think you guys are trusting maxmind too much.
Serbia and Montenegro does not exist for 6 years now, and they are still listing it as a high-risk country. Well done!
Indonesia too. :P i disabled this function because all my Indonesian client marked as fraud. lol
edit: @vedran yep!
They still have IP blocks assigned to them according to countryipblocks.net and WHOIS.
whois.domaintools.com/91.199.17.0
whois.domaintools.com/213.149.96.0
Just that they aren't on this list because high-risk fraud but because politically unstable situation decade ago. Just like @Vedran said - long term outdated list. But what would ordinary host know about that...
Sure they do, Serbia (RS) and Montenegro (ME) are separate countries, but Serbia and Montenegro (CS) does not exist anymore (as a single country). I'm not sure if they are even using the same IP blocks anymore. Either way their list is outdated, I'd take it with a grain of salt.
I agree with Spirit, get in touch with their support. MaxMind is an indicator at best, a useful one, but there are situations when it doesn't trigger when it should, and situations when it triggers when it should not. 'blacklisted' IPs, large distance IP/address distance, wrong zip codes, 'flagged' countries, proxies, free email provider, etc. are all impact factors to increase the risk score.
Source? And regardless of what their possibly outdated website says, they're still the best anti-fraud system I've used.
It's not possibly outdated website. It is outdated as fact - Serbia and Montenegro(CS) does not exist more than half decade. What's so hard to understand here?
Well but they still have IP blocks so maybe Maxmind is refering to clients having one of those IPs?
It still enforce rules on old, outdated informations.
Seems he answered your question already. And having usable IPs listed under defunct countries, it makes sense why MaxMind would continue to list them. Considering how quickly (within hours) MaxMind added the latest mass batch of IPs given to China, I wouldn't say outdated at all.
Sure, they're not always bang-on, and like any third-party module I've added a good deal of custom calls to make it work exactly how I want... but despite how quick you are to shit on them for deciding to keep listing countries as they appear on WHOIS, I don't see you offering any better alternatives.
@Aldryic it's same as adding SOVIET UNION (SU) to maxmind list - for your better understanding. How up to date would throwing all baltic countries, Ukraina, Russia, Uzbekistan.. into one bucket and mark it as high risk fraud nowaday?
The fact that MaxMind's website is NOT out of date.
The person who quoted the out of date information did NOT quote MaxMind. 