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Why are there multiple orders from customers checking out with just 'shipping protection?' Is this fraud?

It's highly likely it's a scammer testing stolen credit card details and using your site to find ones which work.
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We highly recommend that you immediately refund all of these fraudulent orders.
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There is some more info at Shopify’s community forum and apparently it’s a common fraud from scammers who are testing stolen credit card details on smaller retailers - when a payment works, they then go and make larger purchases elsewhere.
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It can happen on any product - but commonly these scammers choose low value ones to test as they probably hope the cardholder who's CC is stolen doesn’t realise what’s happening.
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If it’s happening with a shipping protection product - this is likely because it has a product page which scammers can find via google and then checkout. It’s annoyingly not something that can be fixed by any cart apps - as carts won’t show anything if they’re empty - so if scammers are able to checkout with just shipping protection or a ‘free returns’ then they are most likely finding the product page of this item via Google.
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Refunding is definitely the way to go on orders that have already happened.
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To prevent it from happening, a Shopify community forum poster recommended creating a Shopify Flow that does not capture payments for Medium/High risk orders so that you do ‘manual payment capture’ on these.
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It could technically also be setup for low value items - but this kind of fraud could happen on any product so this may not be completely fool proof.
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So you could also setup a shopify flow to not capture payment on orders that only contain shipping protection or 'free return's products.

Here’s Shopify’s guide on setting up fraud prevention flows:
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Apparently shopify blocks risky IP addresses, but some can slip through the cracks. It's unfortunately not something Unicorn can do anything about.
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