Skip to main content
Location data provides critical signals for fraud detection. Verisoul analyzes user location information to identify suspicious patterns and help protect your business from geographically-based fraud threats.

​
Location Signal Types

Verisoul collects and analyzes various types of location data:

​
IP Geolocation

  • Country: The country associated with the IP address
  • Region/State: The regional subdivision within the country
  • City: The city associated with the IP address
  • Coordinates: Latitude and longitude
  • Postal code: Where available

​
Country Tracking

Verisoul tracks country information at both the session and account level:
  • Session country: The country detected for the current session based on IP geolocation
  • Account country: The most recent country associated with the user account
  • Account countries: A historical record of all countries a user has been seen in

​
True Country Detection

Verisoul employs advanced techniques to detect a user’s actual location, even when they’re using proxies or VPNs:
  • true_country_code: Represents our best determination of a user’s actual location
  • Available for approximately 10% of proxy/VPN traffic
  • Leverages multiple data providers and proprietary ML algorithms
  • Helps identify users attempting to mask their true location
  • Defaults to the IP address country (session.location.country_code) when no additional signals are found

​
Location Spoofing Score

The location_spoofing score measures intent: is this user trying to appear somewhere other than where they actually are? The score separates that question from the technical means used. A VPN, a proxy, or an odd timezone is a mechanism, and plenty of legitimate users run VPNs while their location spoofing score stays low. The score rises when independent evidence shows the user’s apparent location and actual location disagree, and it rises more when the gap is large: a user appearing one border away from their evidence, Mexico versus the US, scores lower than a user masking an intercontinental move like China to the US.

​
What feeds the score

The score blends several independent location-consistency checks, each comparing a different view of the user’s location:
  • Timezone vs IP geography: the device’s configured timezone is geographically far from where the IP says the user is
  • Device language vs IP country: the device’s language implies a country inconsistent with the IP location; common variants like en-US abroad are treated as benign
  • Network latency: connection round-trip timing is inconsistent with the claimed location, the pattern of traffic tunneled through a distant intermediate server
  • WebRTC and GPS evidence: peer-connection or device-location data disagrees with the IP-derived location
  • Distance from expected countries: for accounts that declared expected countries, how far the session’s location is from the nearest declared country
A session with one mild inconsistency typically stays low. Several independent signals pointing to the same large displacement drive the score up.

​
Location Data in API Response

The Verisoul API provides comprehensive location data in the response:

​
Understanding Location Fields

  • session.true_country_code: Our determination of the user’s actual country, even if they’re using a proxy/VPN
  • session.location: Detailed location information derived from IP geolocation
  • account.country: The most recent country associated with this user account
  • account.countries: Array of all distinct countries this user has been seen in across all sessions (include true_country_code)
Note: When no proxy/VPN is detected or when we cannot determine the true location behind a proxy, true_country_code will default to the same value as session.location.country_code.

​
How to use location signals

Location signals provide powerful tools for fraud prevention and regulatory compliance. Here are the most common ways our customers leverage location data:

​
Blocking Risky Geographies

One of the most common rules implemented by companies is blocking access from high-risk geographies or regions they don’t service:
  • Regulatory Compliance: Block users from countries where your service is not licensed to operate
  • Fraud Prevention: Restrict access from countries with historically high fraud rates
  • Risk Management: Apply additional verification steps for users from moderate-risk countries

​
Leveraging True Country Detection

The true_country_code field is particularly valuable for geographic blocking rules:
  • Bypass Prevention: Detect users attempting to bypass geo-restrictions using VPNs or proxies
  • Accurate Enforcement: Apply geographic rules based on the user’s actual location, not their apparent IP location
  • Compliance Assurance: Ensure regulatory compliance even when users attempt to mask their location

​
Implementation in Verisoul

​
Multi-Provider IP Intelligence

Verisoul uses multiple IP intelligence providers to maximize accuracy:
  • Combines data from several leading IP intelligence services that is updated in real-time
  • IP geolocation is one of the few data sources that Verisoul does not derive entirely on its own, due to the massive scale required to cover global IP locations
  • Maintains integrations with multiple specialized IP intelligence providers to ensure comprehensive global coverage
  • Applies proprietary ML algorithms to determine the most accurate location
  • Our ML system selects the most accurate provider for any given IP based on:
    • Historical accuracy evaluations by geography
    • Real-time signals such as which of our 300+ cloud regions the request was routed to
    • Request latencies and network path analysis
    • Consistency checks across multiple data sources
  • Identifies discrepancies that may indicate location spoofing
  • Attempts to detect true location even when proxies/VPNs are in use