Hello! We have an ongoing (and potentially fraudulent) problem with online constituents being created with gibberish names and bogus addresses. AND there are never any orders associated with the new accounts. I cannot figure out the purpose, if this is a preemptive attempt at setting up fraudulent order, and are they BOT created. I run a New Record Summary report everyday, and everyday go through the list of new online accounts that were created the day before. The bogus accounts are pretty easy to spot, but sometimes number in the teens or twenties each day. I then go into each account and deactivate them, which can be quite laborious. Does anyone else have this issue and do you have any other way of dealing with them. More often than not, they have emails with the word stellard in the address. I have an ongoing ticket trying to find a pattern that might help create some preventative measures in keeping these accounts from being created. Any shared experiences are welcome.
Hello! We also are seeing some of these accounts. I have also submitted a Support Ticket as I am curious as to what our options might be. Please see Tess Support Ticket #631103 Thanks! Sarah McLain
AT&T Performing Arts Center
Never mind. I must retract my success. It was pointed out to me by Katie Lachance-Duffy that I searched "stallard" and not "stellard", having misread the thread and then continued that error in my own post.
Looks like we also have 8 of the "stellard" accounts, all very much fake looking. It looks like the frequency for us is approximately 2 per month with the last one coming in around the start of May. So definitely not in the teens and twenties per day as mentioned by the original poster here, but still present.
Ugh, John A. Moskal II, I'm sorry you're seeing this too!
Hi, Nic. Thank you, I opened ticket [631368] just now.
We are seeing this increasingly in ours too. They started popping up back in February this year but it's just increasing in number, always including stellardl in the email address...
Hey Nick,
If we could start conversations about this as well, that would be great. I had a ticket open in the past about this but it was closed, I've reopened it and explained the above in it - Ticket #571426Thank you!
I did some testing on this in Test when trying to figure out the best approach - inactivating the login will stop that email address from being used again, deleting it can result in new accounts being created with the email address. You can also inactivate the record entirely and it will work the same as if the email address has been inactivated.
I created a ticket for this as well #649948. We've had over 200 accounts created since 2.28.23 by stellardl. We run our New Record Summary every day and inactivate the accounts as they're created.
I'm putting in a ticket on this now. The Peace Center has 207 stellardl accounts as of this morning.
Our org is also having the same issue with the stellard accounts. There are other bogus looking account being created as well.
Hi Carlie. Like so many of us in this forum, I would recommend opening a ticket about this issue. There seems to be many of us experiencing these possibly fraudulent account creations. So the more tickets out there, the more likely to find something to do about it. Like John from The Center for the Performing Arts, and Chris from the Guthrie, we at Mayo Performing Arts Center have added just added JavaScript to our account creation page. It hasn't totally stopped the problem. But I am hoping it slows it down.
We have been hit multiple times by this issue as well. Back on 8/28 we started seeing hundreds of fake accounts created, 929 to be exact in just two days. Tessitura updated their bot protection for us and it mostly stopped until recently. On 10/20 we had another 407 false records created in just one day. This problem appears to be series enough that I think more resources should be devoted to it from Tessitura’s end. Especially given this is impacting most, if not all, TNEW orgs. I’ve had a help ticket (#642880) open with Tessitura since August.
Bringing this to the top. Have we figured out a way yet to stop these Stellard accounts from being created? We deactivated 70 over the weekend and have since had 5 more created in the past 2 days.
Hi Jessica. No sure-fire solution has been discovered or developed. Mayo Performing Arts Center has addressed fraud in a recent CRM assessment, which basically deals with three layers of what one might consider fraud. First is the creation of what I call bogus accounts (stellard emails) Then there are secondary resellers (scalpers) which while legally not fraud as long as there is no legislature to prevent third parties from reselling our tickets at exorbitant prices, none-the-less interfere with our ability to give good customer service and sell to customers legitimately priced tickets. Then there are "bad actors" who make last minute online purchases, using fraudulent credit cards, then those sales are disputed as fraud after the show has past. Implementing AVS (address verification service) in TNEW should take care of this third case of fraud, but there are certain defects in the current functionality of AVS. Using delayed eTicket delivery method helps combat scalper activity. Currently, we have not been able to keep bogus accounts from being created. Nor do we understand the reason for such accounts being created other than their potential use for future fraudulent activity. We do use RECAPTCHA which should prevent BOT activity in creating a new account. We also have a "terms and conditions" waiver that we require to be checked at the end of the order creation. If these people/BOTS are getting around RECAPTA and are intending to create fraudulent orders, it is possible that our terms and conditions waiver is preventing the person/BOT from creating an actual order. This would result in a bogus new account with no order. This is just a guess at what might be happening. Perhaps someone from Tessitura can weigh in on this? We just continue to run a daily report of new constituents and inactivate these bogus accounts. We also are able to find some of these last minute fraudulent sales and return them before the show occurs and before a fraud dispute can be issued.
You have summed up the "issues" perfectly. Like what is their end game with these stellard email addresses? Thanks for posting!