WHMCS order for a hidden product...

[PC-Mike]

Hi all,

 

Thought I'd pick your brains, as I just received an order from Tokyo, Japan, for a product that is marked as hidden in my WHMCS system (in fact it is a hidden product in a hidden group even!!!). I am a UK company, so an order from Japan, is itself a little odd.

 

The product is free because it was a testing product that was never released or publicised, and a price was never set for it.... then because I rejigged the packages before release, it was eventually abandoned and left hidden rather than ever being given a price.

 

So someone just signed up as a new customer, with an order for said hidden product (it was fortunately on "no auto setup"). Should I be worried by this? Has someone been trying to bait my system? Could there be a backdoor in it... or is it as simple as trying different product numbers in the address bar?

 

Has anyone else had this happen?

 

Could it be a legitimate customer who just thought they'd found an awesome deal of a good package for free (which I'm not going to give them!), but therefore I should handle it with polite customer service and say that package isn't available, and point them to the current range and prices? Or do you think it is attempted fraud and just to silently cancel the pending order and say nothing.

 

What would you do, and should I be worried?

 

Thanks

 

Mike

[zomex]

Hello Mike,

 

I wouldn't worry about this too much, providing your WHMCS products are setup as they should be e.g delete any products you don't offer or once you used to test.

 

By ticking the hide product box it's simply removed from the order page but not from the system/the search engines. It's likely that either one of two things happened:

 

1) This user was using Google to find such products by searching for something like "Powered by WHMCompleteSolution free".

 

2) They may have gone through your product URL testing each number. Anyone familiar with WHMCS will be able to find hidden products.

 

Providing you either remove the products that you don't want people to order or set the stock to 0 you won't have any problems.

 

Jack

[ethix]

or is it as simple as trying different product numbers in the address bar?

 

Has anyone else had this happen?

 

 

That is what I think they are doing.

 

Yes it happened to me also they were from Japan and used the email blogsougolink gmail com on the 23/12/2010

[othellotech]

Thought I'd pick your brains, as I just received an order from Tokyo, Japan, for a product that is marked as hidden in my WHMCS system (in fact it is a hidden product in a hidden group even!!!)

 

It'll be some */spammer hoping to find a product which auto-creates or costs nothing - they do this cycling through the products you do have, then trying any missing numbers

 

Block the IP and close the client to stop them ordering again.

[WHMCS John]

Activate stock control and set the level to 0 to prevent orders for a product.

[PC-Mike]

Thanks Guys.

 

I can confirm that I don't think it was a direct Google search for free products. As a check, I've tried searches on just my domain, for both "0.00" which only returned only .co.uk domain transfers... and a search for "free" returned nothing.

 

Since the ID number was a low one, I suspect that the manual entry of product ID numbers was the method used.

 

I'll implement stock control on the offending packages from now on.

 

I'll chalk it up as an "experience" and learning lesson... but hopefully a good sign though, that I must be getting somewhere on Google to be found and targeted for fraud!

 

Mike

[PulsedMedia]

Some just go through the product ids to try out. We've had such orders as well, quite a few them. We usually put group hidden + product hidden + product stock 0 if we don't want to offer it right now.