What is account takeover risk scoring?

Account takeover (ATO) risk scoring evaluates the risk of a login attempt in real time, typically by combining IP-level signals — bot detection, datacenter or residential proxy origin, abuse-list membership — with account-history context, so a login can be allowed, challenged, or blocked based on how consistent the request looks with genuine access.

Why is credential stuffing hard to stop with rate limiting alone?

Credential stuffing attacks are distributed across large numbers of IPs, often residential proxies, specifically to stay under any single-IP rate limit. Rate limiting catches unsophisticated, concentrated attacks but misses distributed ones, which is why IP category (is this a proxy, a datacenter, a known-bad address) is a more durable signal than request volume alone.

Should every risky login be blocked outright?

No — category should drive the verification response, not a binary deny. A bot or datacenter origin on a banking login is close to conclusive and can justify hard blocking or mandatory step-up. Abuse-list membership alone is a weaker signal and often warrants an additional verification step (one-time code, device check) rather than an outright block, to avoid locking out genuine users on shared or previously-flagged networks.

How fast does the risk score need to be for a login flow?

Login is a real-time, user-facing flow, so the check needs to complete within the same request cycle as authentication itself — typically well under a second — which is why this use case calls for the real-time API rather than offline file enrichment.

Use case · Fintech, banking, crypto

Login & Account Takeover Risk Scoring

Credential stuffing is the highest-frequency attack surface in financial services, run at scale from infrastructure rather than by hand. A successful takeover usually shows a login from an origin that's inconsistent with the account's history — the IP is the signal that catches it.

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Why login is the moment that matters

Quick answer

Account takeover risk scoring calls an API at the moment of login and returns the IP's risk category — bot, datacenter, residential proxy, abuse-list membership — so the category, not a binary flag, drives whether the login is allowed, challenged, or blocked.

Credential stuffing runs at scale from infrastructure, which is precisely why single-IP rate limiting misses most of it: the attack is deliberately distributed across enough addresses to stay under any one IP's threshold. What survives that distribution, though, is the category of the infrastructure itself — datacenter ranges and residential proxy pools look different from a normal residential or mobile connection, regardless of how many addresses are used. This is why IP-based risk scoring has become a standard layer of account takeover fraud detection alongside device fingerprinting and behavioural analysis.

The other durable signal is consistency: a login attempt from an origin that doesn't match the account's history is a red flag even when the IP itself has no prior abuse record.

How IP Raccoon helps

An API call at authentication acts as an extra security layer alongside whatever your own account-history logic already does. It answers with the categories the address is flagged in and the detection behind each — the response column below is the policy you build on top, not something the API decides for you:

Category	Signal strength on a banking login	Suggested response
Bot / datacenter origin	Close to conclusive	Block or hard step-up
Residential proxy	Elevated risk	Additional verification (OTP, device check)
Abuse-list membership	Weak signal alone	Soft challenge, avoid outright block
Clean residential / mobile	Low risk	Allow

What to look for in a login risk scoring signal

Category-driven responses, not a single risk threshold that either blocks too much or too little
Real-time response time compatible with a user-facing authentication flow
Coverage of residential proxy networks specifically, since they're built to defeat plain IP reputation and rate limiting
A signal you can combine with your own account-history checks, not a replacement for them

$ curl 'https://api.ipraccoon.com/ip/198.51.100.7' \
  -H "Authorization: $IP_RACCOON_TOKEN"

{
  "ip": "198.51.100.7",
  "risks": {
    "anonymizers": "proxy"
  }
}

Score your login flow before the next attack

Add IP risk scoring to authentication in minutes and see how much of your login traffic is coming from bots, datacenters and residential proxies.

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

More use cases

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