What are third party created customers

[Pamela7]

I have just noticed 4 new customers who are “third party created” in my system. I have a very small business, know all my customers- either I make an appointment for them after an email exchange or I get a notification that they have scheduled an appointment for themselves. 

These people have no appointments and I can think of no valid reason for their information to be stored in my system.

I am concerned that there is some funny business going on here, even though I can’t imagine what that might be. 

Over the past 7 years, I’ve never noticed this. Given today’s service disruption, I’m on high alert. What is going on?

[HC_Charlie]

Hello @Pamela7 thanks for your post. Often times these 3rd party customers are nothing nefarious, either legitimately added by a "3rd party" integration perhaps, or most commonly there are Google bots and roam around and somehow connect with websites and drop these customers into where we discover them, eventhough they never bought from us. In the past I've searched for and deleted them.

You can read some more posts about similar issues here:

https://www.sellercommunity.com/t5/Customer-Directory/Fake-Customers-Appearing-in-Customer-Directory...

[Pamela7]

Thanks for the reply. The take away from the linked article is that Square was completely unhelpful and we just need to learn to live with this. Not the answer I wanted to hear, but possibly the only answer I’ll get!

[RobynR]

Thank you, @HC_Charlie, for providing the Community with another best answer.

@Pamela7, If you'd like to take your protection of payments to the next level, I recommend signing up for our Risk Management. You can learn more here.

You can also check this thread out on how to set up the ability to accept or decline on Square appointments.

I hope this information helps. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

[Pamela7]

This information does not address my question. What are third party integrations? Why are they poking around in my business without permission? How do I stop this? 

[RobynR]

@Pamela7 ,HC_Charlie,  provided the Best Answer above.

Unfortunately, we don't have details about the third-party customer, and there's no way for us to prevent them from accessing your site.

I understand that you found the previous information unhelpful. So I wanted to provided some extra resources above to help you understand and safeguard your account.

I acknowledge your frustration and am here to help with any related concerns.

[Pamela7]

Five times in one week someone added customers to my directory in a mysterious way. The only customers who should be in my directory a people who have made appointments or purchased gift certificates. These additions were made through some back door channel. The “best answer” is that “often times they are not nefarious”. This is deeply concerning to me. Someone is poking around in the system, is that not considered hacking? What about stored credit card info is it safe? 

[Pamela7]

OMG. It’s happened 4 more times today. This is scary.

[_Violet]

Hi @Pamela7 👋 Violet here, following up for @RobynR. It looks like you still need help with this, so I kept the ball rolling on your inquiry.

I reached out to the Customer Directory team for some more details on "third-party" customers. They let me know that it looks like your website is third-party. So if you're selling gift cards on the website, or using like the embedded booking form - anything like that will display as "third-party" in the Directory because it's coming from the square "plug in" on your website, like @HC_Charlie mentioned.

I hope this information helps to put you at ease, but please do let me know if you have any additional questions 🙂

[Pamela7]

Some bot continues to add fake customers to my directory. I disabled the plug-in on my website as customer service suggested this might be the access point this mysterious third party uses. Clearly it is not and someone is accessing my site without permission. This is deeply troubling to me. 

Is anyone else finding names in your directory that have no business being there? 

[MayaP]

Hello @Pamela7, this certainly sounds frustrating, and I am happy to help in any way I can. What third party are you using? Have you inquired about this with them? 

[Pamela7]

Hi Maya. I am not using any third party. For the past two weeks, fictitious names have been showing up in my directory. None of them have appointments or have purchased a gift certificate. There is no reason nor any way possible for people to add themselves to my directory. It is highly suspicious and worrisome.

[RobynR]

@Pamela7, I merged your post with an existing thread where other Square Sellers have also discussed this topic. We merge duplicate conversations to keep like comments in one place and make it easier for others to find the thread in the future. 

Please check out this Best Answer from one of our Community Moderators. 

Also, learn more ways to Protect Yourself from Scams and Fraud.

As always, if you have any more questions, feel free to let me know.

[Pamela7]

My question still hasn’t been answered.

I have shut down gift certificates and the plug in on my website. Nobody should be able to be added to my directory. It’s basically disabled. And yet, they continue to get through somehow. Having done some research online, I see a lot of businesses having trouble with fake customers making appointments and really causing havoc. I’m completely astounded that Square is not taking this breach seriously. 

[RobynR]

@Pamela7, I apologize for any oversight on my part.

To provide you with the most effective assistance, I suggest reaching out to our Support team. They can examine your account in real-time and offer the best solution to your question.

Note: Support is available 6 a.m.-6 p.m. Pacific Time (9 a.m.-9 p.m. Eastern Time), Monday through Friday.

I understand this can be frustrating, and I apologize for any inconvenience.

[Pamela7]

I tried reaching out to the Support Team when this first began. They directed me to the community. Also, clicking on Support Team above leads to this dead end; An invalid set of parameters has been specified in the url. Which is entirely consistent with my experience of trying to reach customer service!

[Candlestore]

@Pamela7 ;

Well I will never be able to one of your customers my email is firstname.lastname@......  I have a web site off of Square and I was seeing shopping carts of $4000 -$15,000 dollar orders.  My larger orders for my online sales usually are in the $150 - $300 range.  Then I started checking on who had these large carts sitting there to be paid.  Samething your seeing First Name  last name filled in and same for email address.  So I dug deeper, I looked at the IP addresses...... now here is where it got really weird...... They were all the SAME ip address.  So Now i was thinking a scammer trying to break through my sites protections.  Where is this IP address's location...... Georgia.  Good It is with in the USA the Feds can get this person. Who is this IP address....... WTH....... AMAZON!!@!@!!!!   I blocked their ip address from my site and have not had anymore of those.    Amazon was checking my prices on high ticket items that they were low on.   They were $600 and up Motion clocks, that I sell at the manufactures minimum allowable price.  I do this because I drop ship them right from the manufacturer so I have no holding costs.  So I am not sure who is doing this to you or could be a competitor or someone checking prices like Amazon was to me.  

Like I said in the begining I do not use Square for my online site, but maybe you could find out if these Fname.Lname@ are coming from the same IP and be able to block that address from your site.  If they are coming from random ones I do not suggest doing this as you could accidentilly block a real customer.

[Pamela7]

Wow, Keith. That is nuts. My situation is different as I don’t have a store, just an appointment calendar and the only people in my directory (up until last week anyway) were actual clients with actual appointments. The mystery customers are not coming in through the front door. 

[Pamela7]

When clients use the plug-in to make an appointment the source is “Appointment”. Plus they then have an appointment, which they had to pay for in advance. The mystery clients have no appointments. No gift certificate purchases either. 

Not only is there no reason for clients to enter their names, email addresses and phone numbers without making an appointment, there IS NO WAY TO DO SO from my website. I’ll add that all of these mystery customers have an email address of firstname.lastname@… HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS.

The only thing more alarming than some bot accessing and populating my directory is the fact that Square is not disturbed and seems to think it is perfectly normal. IT IS NOT.

[tifholmes]

I'm also having this issue. I'm finding dozens of new "customers" every day in my marketing list that aren't real customers. This is maddening. I've been deleting them, but if this continues I will close my Square website and move it elsewhere. 

[Pamela7]

It IS maddening, isn’t it? I feel relieved that finally someone understands. Customer service isn’t at all concerned. ??? I moved over to Acuity. LOVE IT! I removed all the links to my Square site, but I still access it for client info and I noticed that it’s still happening! Sadly, I think you can expect it to continue on your site as well. Sigh