Blocky Fraud Filter IP Blocker

I genuinely didn’t want to leave a negative review, but this experience has left me no choice.

I installed the app on November 6th to block bot traffic from China using VPNs—specifically from the US and Seychelles. Initially, everything seemed to work fine. However, by November 9th, I noticed Seychelles appearing in my abandoned checkouts, which was strange given that I had blocked the country. All other blocked countries were showing as successfully blocked, except for Seychelles.

I contacted support immediately. A developer responded, explaining, "we are actively investigating an issue on our end where blocked visitors are indeed getting blocked, but their abandoned checkout is still getting mistakenly logged by Shopify as an abandoned checkout because they are still at checkout, getting blocked. We are actively working on a fix that should be deployed shortly for that problem."

The response did not make much sense to me since all other blocked countries were being blocked by their app. They also advised I enable Shopify’s email verification at checkout—knowing it might deter genuine customers. Despite this, the issue persisted. The bots began using valid, generic email addresses. I followed up again and was asked to grant store access to the dev team, which I did and confirmed. It’s now been three business days with no update. Meanwhile, the Seychelles bot continues to create abandoned checkouts, skewing my store analytics.

Support is reading my messages but choosing not to respond. I can only assume they’re struggling to resolve the issue and don’t have a fix. Still, a status update—even if it’s not a solution—would be appreciated.

I’ll wait another 24 hours for a response. If I don’t hear back, I’ll initiate a chargeback for the amount paid and delete the app while I search for a more reliable and consistent alternative.

Update: They contacted me on 22nd November to address the issue, and I was informed that testing was underway to resolve it. I have waited patiently, but my patience has now worn thin. The aggressive bot traffic originating from China has severely disrupted my analytics. Over the past seven days alone, we have recorded more than a thousand visits from China, which is clearly reflected in Google Analytics. If these bots are truly being blocked, why has the activity not ceased? At this point, the app has failed to deliver on its promised functionality.

Update: The developer reached out to explain the constraints they have in trying to block these bots from the checkout, which I found acceptable and thus my edited review.

It's easy to understand and to set up. Be prepared that you will need to educate your customers if they get caught by the blockers due to their personal computers being compromised or if they use VPNs. Much of our custom "you've been blocked" page is about why they've been blocked. I know we've lost a few customers over this - some are willing to give up their IP numbers to whitelist them, others think we're overdoing it on security.

There are a very specific improvement I'd like to see:
1- ability to better style the blocked message; it needs margins and the ability to make it fit with our branding. It is not professional looking right now.

There was a China bot that was on my store website at almost all times for nearly 24 hours, so I downloaded this app to block China and after a couple of days no more China bot visitors. I also blocked Russia and Nigeria since that is where a lot of these attempted bot orders come from. I don't believe the "total country blocks" number because I think it's heavily inflated, but it does obviously work. In the end though, $10 a month or $60 a year is really expensive just to block 3 countries. All I need is the country blocker. There should be a cheaper plan option just for that one feature.

I can't quite tell if the countries I 've blocked are indeed blocked, since they still show up on my"live view" sessions.