Scamalytics have released the February 2020 list of the top 100 high risk ISPs for dating fraud. The list is compiled based on ISPs used by reported scammers in February 2020 across the Scamalytics network. ISPs must meet a minimum traffic level to make the list. They are then ranked by the proportion of traffic coming through that ISP’s network which is reported to be fraudulent.
Dating services can use the list to supplement their existing ISP blacklists. An updated list is released each month, based on the previous month’s scammer activity.
The top ten highest risk ISPs are listed in the table below.
Dating fraud: Top ten high risk ISPs – February 2020
Click an ISP to see the full fraud report for that ISP.
You can see the full list of 100 high risk ISPs here.
What’s changed since January 2020?
Our top spot was previously occupied by Altus Communications Inc., a private label telecoms provider. At the top of the table this month is an Israeli provider, Net-style Atarim Ltd, with the UK-based Bandwidth Technologies coming in at a close second. In third place there’s the first of two appearances by the Hostroyale Network: this one is its Glasgow data centre, but its Finnish operation also features in our top ten.
Net-style Atarim operates two websites, http://www.netstyle.co.il in Hebrew and a secondary one in English, and its offices are in a science park in Israel. Founded in 1998 as a web design operation it became a RIPE LIR in 2013 and began “supporting and accepting any crypto currency payments” in 2015. The site promises testimonials from the VPN provider HideMyAss and the IP address provider VPNStaticIP.com, but the appropriate section is not on the site.
Bandwidth Technologies is a trading name of Hydra Communications, which rents office space in London’s Canary Wharf and is registered and operates from a small business centre in Bradley Stoke, a town just north of Bristol. It has network points of presence in London and Amsterdam and its terms state that “our services can be used for anything that is legal under UK law”.
Hostroyale started in Pune, India in 2009, where its head office is still located, and has 33 colocation units around the world – which is why it features more than once in this month’s top ten, with high levels of fraudulent activity detected across multiple partners. The company offers the familiar mix of dedicated and virtual servers and domains.
IP lookup tools
The top 100 list builds on Scamalytics’ IP fraud risk lookup tool and ISP risk reports. Their IP lookup tool allows dating services to lookup an IP address and see information such as whether that IP address is running a proxy server. Their ISP risk reports show information such as the distribution of proxy servers across the ISP’s range of IP addresses.
Scamalytics maintain the world’s largest anti-scammer blacklists dedicated to the dating industry, including IP addresses, ISPs, photos, profiles, email addresses and chat handles used by reported scammers.
Visit Scamalytics.com for more information.