Proxy Detection Legacy Web Service

The proxy detection web service provides proxy-related information about IP addresses via an HTTP-based API.

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. In some cases, this data center may not be the one that provides you with the best service. You can explicitly try the following hostnames to see which one provides the best performance for you:

• minfraud-us-east.maxmind.com
• minfraud-us-west.maxmind.com
• minfraud-eu-west.maxmind.com

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.

Client Code Examples

Below are some sample clients for this web service.

Perl

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use Encode qw( decode );
use Getopt::Long;
use LWP::UserAgent;
use URI;
use URI::QueryParam;

my $license_key = 'YOUR_LICENSE_KEY';
my $ip_address  = '24.24.24.24';

GetOptions(
    'license:s' => \$license_key,
    'ip:s'      => \$ip_address,
);

my $uri = URI->new('https://minfraud.maxmind.com/app/ipauth_http');
$uri->query_param( l => $license_key );
$uri->query_param( i => $ip_address );

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new( timeout => 5 );
my $response = $ua->get($uri);

die 'Request failed with status ' . $response->code()
    unless $response->is_success();

my %proxy = map { split /=/, $_ } split /;/, $response->content();

if ( defined $proxy{err} && length $proxy{err} ) {
    die "MaxMind returned an error code for the request: $proxy{err}\n";
}
else {
    print "\nMaxMind Proxy data for $ip_address\n\n";
    for my $field ( sort keys %proxy ) {
        print sprintf( "  %-20s  %s\n", $field, $proxy{$field} );
    }
    print "\n";
}

Python

#!/usr/bin/env python

import argparse
import requests
import sys

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='MaxMind Proxy Detection web service client')
parser.add_argument('--license', default='YOUR_LICENSE_KEY')
parser.add_argument('--ip', default='24.24.24.24')

args = parser.parse_args()

payload = {'l': args.license, 'i': args.ip};
response = requests.get('https://minfraud.maxmind.com/app/ipauth_http', params=payload)

if response.status_code != requests.codes.ok:
    sys.stderr.write("Request failed with status %s\n" % response.status_code)
    sys.exit(1)

proxy = dict( f.split('=') for f in response.text.split(';') )

if 'err' in proxy and len(proxy['err']):
    sys.stderr.write("MaxMind returned an error code for the request: %s\n" % proxy['err'])
    sys.exit(1)
else:
    print "\nMaxMind Proxy data for %s\n\n" % args.ip
    for (key, val) in proxy.items():
        print "  %-20s  %s" % (key, val)
    print "\n"

PHP

#!/usr/bin/php

<?php
$license_key = 'LICENSE_KEY_HERE';
$ipaddress   = 'IP_ADDRESS_HERE';
$query = "https://minfraud.maxmind.com/app/ipauth_http?l=" . $license_key 
    . "&i=" . $ipaddress;
$score = file_get_contents($query);
echo $score;

ASP

Dim objHttp, strQuery
strQuery = "https://minfraud.maxmind.com/app/ipauth_http?l=" & license_key & _
    "&i=" & ipaddress
set objHttp = Server.CreateObject("Msxml2.ServerXMLHTTP")
objHttp.open "GET", strQuery, false
objHttp.send
Response.Write objHttp.ResponseText
Set objHttp = Nothing