Documentation Overview

Veridis Fraud Guard Free is a local-first WooCommerce protection plugin designed to stop repeat problematic orders, refused Cash on Delivery (COD) deliveries, and abusive checkout attempts.

Unlike third-party fraud scoring tools that charge monthly subscription fees, send sensitive shopper data to external clouds, or rely on opaque AI scoring algorithms, Fraud Guard operates entirely within your WordPress environment. It evaluates customer checkout data against your own curated merchant blocklist locally in real time using indexed database tables without external network overhead.

Where Fraud Guard fits in WooCommerce

Fraud Guard integrates directly into your WordPress administration under WooCommerce → Fraud Guard and extends standard WooCommerce checkout and order management workflows:

• Dashboard: High-level operational overview displaying the active protection mode, total active blocklist entries, and 30-day activity statistics.
• Blocklist: The central merchant blocklist for managing blocked email addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, and email domains.
• Activity: An audit log recording every checkout evaluation that matched a blocklist rule, complete with exact matched identifiers and applied protection actions.
• Import/Export: Tools for migrating blocklist entries via CSV files with validation, preview, and duplicate handling.
• Settings: Storewide configuration for protection modes, customizable customer-facing error messages, and internal operational preferences.
• Order Details Integration: One-Click Block Customer action and meta box details directly on WooCommerce order edit screens (supporting both HPOS and legacy post edit screens).

Core concepts

To use Fraud Guard effectively, store managers rely on several foundational concepts:

Concept	Purpose
Merchant Blocklist	A local database table of identifiers that your store has chosen to restrict or monitor.
Protection Mode	The storewide operational policy applied when a checkout matches the blocklist: Off, Block, Hold, or Warn.
Identifier Type	The specific data point evaluated during checkout: Email, Phone, IP, or Domain.
Hold Mode (COD)	Automatically places matching native Cash on Delivery orders on hold (wc-on-hold) to stop fulfillment before parcel dispatch. Non-COD matches complete payment normally with a private order note.
One-Click Block	An order detail screen action that automatically extracts billing email, phone number, and IP from an existing order and adds them to the blocklist.
Exact Match	Deterministic matching against normalized customer data (e.g., lowercased emails, sanitized phone digits) to eliminate false positives.
Activity Retention	Automatic daily cron cleanup that purges matched identifier values older than 90 days to preserve database health and customer privacy.

Quick start guide

Getting started with Fraud Guard requires three simple steps:

1. Review requirements and install the plugin from WordPress administration.
2. Configure your protection mode in WooCommerce → Fraud Guard → Settings. We recommend starting in Warn or Hold mode while reviewing initial store traffic.
3. Add known problematic identifiers manually or import existing records using CSV Import.

Local data ownership

All blocklist rules and activity logs are stored locally in dedicated database tables (wp_veridis_fraud_guard_blocklist and wp_veridis_fraud_guard_activity). No customer information is ever transmitted to Veridis or any third-party service.