Securify help for Shopify merchants
Why country blocking is not 100% accurate
Country blocking works from a visitor's IP address, and an IP address does not always show where someone really is.
Why a location can be wrong
- IP location data is imperfect. An IP address is linked to a location through databases, and those databases can be out of date or wrong.
- VPNs, proxies and Tor. These tools route traffic through another country, so a visitor can appear to be somewhere else.
- Shared and changing addresses. Internet providers share addresses between customers and reassign them, sometimes across regions.
- The internet keeps changing. Address blocks are sold and moved between countries, and location data takes time to catch up.
So a visitor from a blocked country can sometimes get in, and a real customer from an allowed country can sometimes be blocked.
What you can do
- Use it as a first layer. Country blocking works best together with your other rules.
- Turn on Block VPN Users. See When to block VPN users.
- Block the addresses you know about. See When to block an IP address.
- Let trusted visitors in. An IP address on the Allow List skips your other rules.
- Keep the Location Verification Appeal on. In Settings, this lets a visitor blocked by your country or VPN rules, or by Advanced Bot Blocking, click Verify my location on the block page. Their browser asks for permission. If their verified location is in an allowed country, they are unblocked for their current browsing session.
- Review your logs. See How to check why a visit was blocked.
Still stuck? Open the chat bubble in the Securify app or email dev@otp.plus.