Proxy Detection Legacy Web Service

To learn more about the risk associated with a particular IP address, use the minFraud Score service. This service provides the IP Risk Score, a replacement for the proxyScore. To identify anonymous IP addresses in support of geotargeting and ad serving environments, we recommend using the GeoIP2 Anonymous IP database.

The proxy detection web service provides a score measuring the risk associated with an IP address. It is called the IP risk score in our current minFraud services. Learn more about the IP risk score on our knowledge base.

Release Notes

Changes to the proxy detection web service are documented in our release notes.

Device Tracking Add-on

You may optionally include in your site some JavaScript that helps us identify the device your customer is using to determine whether it has been used in previous fraudulent transactions. The device information passed to MaxMind via the Device Tracking Add-on is factored into the proxyScore returned when you query the HTTP API.

HTTP-based API

This web service uses the same hostnames as our minFraud web service. Its URI is https://minfraud.maxmind.com/app/ipauth_http

The minfraud.maxmind.com hostname automatically picks the data center geographically closest to you.

Security

The API is only available via HTTPS. If you attempt to access this service via HTTP, you will receive a 403 Forbidden HTTP response.

We require TLS 1.2 or greater for all requests to our servers to keep your data secure.

Input

The API requires you to pass a set of parameters as an HTTP GET or POST. Results are returned in a simple text format documented below.

The three parameters that this service takes are the IP address to look up, the shopID and your MaxMind license key.

The shopID is your internal ID for the shop, affiliate, or merchant this order is coming from, and is required for customers who are resellers, payment providers, gateways and affiliate networks.

The parameters should be passed in a query string or as a form post (application/x-www-form-urlencoded). The IP address parameter should be named i (lower case "I"), the shopID parameter should be named shopID and the license key should be named l (lower case "L").

The IP address should be passed as a string like "44.55.66.77".

Output

This service returns data as a set of comma-separated fields. The individual fields are not escaped or quoted, but they will never contain a comma.

All strings are returned as ASCII.

Name

Type (length)

Description

proxyScore

decimal

A score from 0.00-4.00 indicating the likelihood that the user's IP address is an anonymous proxy, open proxy, or VPN.

proxyScore	Likelihood of fraud
0.5	15%
1.0	30%
2.0	60%
3.0+	90%

A proxyScore of 0.00 will be returned for a corporate proxy or private IP and an empty string will be returned for an invalid IP.

err

enum

If there was an error or warning with this request, this field contains an error code string.

The possible error codes are:

PERMISSION_REQUIRED – You do not have permission to use the service. Please contact support@maxmind.com for more information.
LICENSE_REQUIRED – You must provide a license key.
INVALID_LICENSE_KEY – The license key provided is invalid.
MAX_REQUESTS_REACHED – This error will be returned if your account is out of queries or if an invalid license key is provided.

Client Code Examples

Below are some sample clients for this web service.

This page was last updated on September 12, 2024.