Check IP Quality Before Allowing Access

Check IP quality before allowing access is crucial to keeping websites safe from bots, fraud, DDoS attacks and other malicious activities. Many services are now offering IP scoring that can help websites identify potentially risky traffic and use it to add additional security protections such as CAPTCHAs or more detailed verification steps like two-factor authentication.

However, it’s important to understand the limitations of these scores and their role in website security before using them. While they can be a useful tool to help filter out unwanted traffic, there are other ways to evaluate the security of an IP address that provide more context and more accurate assessments of potential risks.

How to Check IP Quality Before Allowing Access to Your App

Most IP score services look at the geolocation, ASN (Autonomous System Number), and DNS records of an IP address, as well as historical behavior and blacklists to come up with a risk assessment. This usually includes checking for suspicious activity, such as frequent or high-frequency requests from the same IP, or communicating with other known malicious IP addresses. They may also look for indicators of anonymity, such as proxies or VPNs.

These factors are used to determine an IP’s overall risk level, which is usually categorized as Low risk, Medium, High, or Extreme risk. Most of these risk levels are subjective and depend on the individual provider’s interpretation of the data, but some take contextual information into account as well. For example, Scamalytics clearly states that their 27/100 rating of an IP is based on the ISP operating it, the fact that it’s residential in origin, and other broader insights into traffic patterns and behavior.