If you own an e-commerce store on WordPress CMS and WooCommerce, what concerns you is the site security. Your online shop can become a sitting target of attackers and malware due to these system’s popularity.
Hackers may abuse your site to steal products, get customers’ information, or even shut the entire store down. Your WooCommerce shop can get hacked in many ways, including credit card frauds, scamming, phishing, bad bots, DDoS attacks, and many other security threats.
And you know what? The WooCommerce thank-you page becomes the most common gate for ill-intentioned users to take bad actions on the store. They can share product links or even give their login accounts to others. Therefore, these people can download your products under your customers’ names.
It now raises security risks not only with outsiders but also with your own customers. In this article, we’ll put together 3 top plugins with their simple guides on how to block unauthorized users from accessing WooCommerce order pages.
Before we begin, let’s take a quick look at some mind-blowing statistics about e-commerce security.
Let’s hop in!
E-commerce Security Problems
Astra claimed in their e-commerce cybercrime report that 32.4% of successful threats happen on e-commerce stores. Admins, users, and employees are their favored areas.
And you know what? Nearly 30% of all traffic coming to your site contain malicious requests. The more traffic you have, the higher chance your site may get hacked by malware.
Consequently, this leads to the death of about 60% of eCommerce stores. They can suffer from these security issues in 6 months maximum.
What’s more, online shopping fraud blew out nearly $58 billion in 8 big industries, according to QuadLayers. It also proved that credit cards contributed to 92% of fraudulent online transactions in 2017.
When it comes to WooCommerce store security, you may be surprised to know that thieves have more than one way to steal your digital products. They get indexed product links appearing on search results while searching on Google, receive the shared links from friends, or steal others’ login details and directly download the products.
For indexed and shared product links, you can easily block indexing and protect them from unauthorized users. It’s possible for you to password protect WooCommerce digital products too. You can also hide the WordPress version number, force SSL on your checkout pages, make backups and security scans daily, or use 2FA (2-factor authentication).
Let’s jump into the most common solutions for securing WooCommerce stores, especially order pages.
#1 Add ReCaptcha to WooCommerce Login Page
The Brute Force Attack is one of the worst nightmares for every WooCommerce store owner. The theory behind such an attack is that if you take an infinite number of attempts to guess a password, you are bound to be right eventually.
Today almost all brute force attacks are performed by bots. If they can access your customers’ accounts, they absolutely can access the order pages and download digital products without having to pay anything. This unauthorized action will cause a lot of damage to your business.
To prevent such an unexpected situation, let’s add reCaptcha to your WooCommerce login page. This tool helps you stop the automated bots effectively.
Among thousands of reCaptcha plugins in the market, the reCaptcha by BestWebSoft Pro plugin stands out to be the most well-trusted one. Its popularity is proved by more than 200.000 installations and 252 5-star reviews on the free version.
Once you’ve installed and activated the plugin, navigate to reCaptcha > Settings in your admin dashboard.
In the WooCommerce section, simply enable reCaptcha for the necessary forms, e.g. login form.
Once you’re done, the “WooCommerce Login” with reCaptcha will look as follows.
That’s it!
You’ve successfully protected your WooCommerce login forms from spam entries while letting real people pass through with ease. Bots cannot guess your customers’ accounts to access the order pages and download digital products.
But what if someone steals your customer’s accounts, not bots?
Don’t worry, you can utilize 2-factor verification as per our instruction below.
#2 Block Unverified Users Access to Order Pages
The Email Verification for WooCommerce Pro plugin allows you to add email verification to your WooCommerce store. This security method requires users to provide two authentication factors to verify their identity. Apart from entering a username and password, they need to key in a code sent to their emails.
With this plugin, you can block order page access for non-verified users. Even though bad guys may get a customer account somehow, they will need a verification code to access the order page and download digital products.
To use this feature, you just need to get the Email Verification for WooCommerce Pro plugin. After that, simply tick the “Block thankyou page” option on the settings page.
That’s all!
But what if customers give their login credentials as well as authentication codes to relatives intentionally? These people can download your links without paying anything.
It’s when you need to restrict order page access based on IP addresses. Each user when buying your products will have a particular IP address. Other strange addresses that re-use these login credentials to download your digital products will be blocked permanently.
As a result, you reduce the chance of unpermitted users getting your premium files for free to the lowest.
For detailed information, let’s jump into our next section!
#3 Restrict Access to WooCommerce Order Page & Product Files by IP Addresses
To restrict WooCommerce thank you page by IP addresses, you need assistance from the PDA Gold plugin and its WooCommerce Integration extension.
The former helps protect the product file URLs from unpermitted users. They will see a 404 not found page when trying to access these links. Instead, the plugin creates private download links for that file so that you can send them to customers.
Once a customer orders your product, they will receive the product link via a thank you page. This link will expire after a number of downloads or a given time.
The latter tool allows you to record customers’ IP addresses after they purchase. Only when logging in with this address, they have the right to access their order pages and product files.
Plus, you don’t have to worry if users use another device or log in from another location. It’s possible for you to permit many different IP addresses.
2 Steps to Protect WooCommerce Order Page by IP Addresses
Step 1: Install and activate the PDA Gold plugin and WooCommerce Integration extension.
- Download PDA Gold and WooCommerce Integration under zip files format
- Head to Plugins > Add New in your WordPress admin dashboard and click Upload Plugin
- Choose the zip files you just downloaded
- Enter license keys sent to your emails and activate the plugins. It will now add the Prevent Direct Access Gold section right to your navigation menu.
Step 2: Set IP restriction rule
- Go to Prevent Direct Access Gold in your sidebar
- Open the WooCommerce tab
- Enter the maximum number of IP addresses you want to grant access to the order pages. We recommend entering at least 3 addresses, including buyers’ and 2 others’ in case their IP addresses are changed. Remember to save your changes.
That’s it! Now, every time your customers place an order, PDA Gold plugin will automatically capture their IP address and show it on their order pages to notify them. Here is what it looks like:
IP Address Restriction – Future of WooCommerce Product Security
There is no perfect solution to protect your WooCommerce products. Hackers and thieves try various methods to steal and take advantage of your products without your permission. And your responsibility is to apply the best method to save both your business and customers.
To prevent automated bots from guessing and accessing your customers’ accounts, consider adding reCaptcha verification to your login page.
If you are still concerned about unauthorized logins, let’s make use of the Email Verification for WooCommerce Pro plugin. It gives you options to block unverified users’ access to WooCommerce stores, including order pages.
To protect your WooCommerce order pages at a higher level, let’s think of the IP address solution. Assigning IP addresses to the order page proves a powerful solution to block strangers from downloading your products via purchasers’ accounts. PDA Gold plugin and its WooCommerce Integration do a great job of securing your WooCommerce products following this direction.
What are you waiting for?
Let’s prevent digital piracy and product theft now!
