--- title: First Time Setup description: "TrustLens is designed to work the moment it's activated — all eight detection modules ship enabled, Card-Testing Defense protects checkout immediately, and scoring runs in the background without configuration. This guide walks through the small number of first-run choices that…" url: "https://webstepper.io/docs/trustlens/getting-started/first-time-setup/" updated: "2026-10-18" category: Getting Started --- # First Time Setup TrustLens is designed to work the moment it's activated — all eight detection modules ship enabled, Card-Testing Defense protects checkout immediately, and scoring runs in the background without configuration. This guide walks through the small number of first-run choices that determine how aggressive scoring is, what the plugin is allowed to do at checkout, and how it talks to you. Plan to spend about 15 minutes on first-time setup. The only step that takes real wall-clock time is Historical Sync, which works through your orders in small batches while a TrustLens admin page is open. --- ## The 5-Minute Setup The fastest path is the **Quick Start** card at the top of the Dashboard. It puts the three choices that matter most in one place — block risky customers at checkout, email me about attacks & high-risk customers, and import your past orders — each saved instantly with a confirmation toast. Work through those three and you've covered the essentials, then click **Hide** to dismiss the card. If you'd rather configure things by hand, do these three: 1. **Run Historical Sync** from the Dashboard (the Quick Start "Import your past orders" item links to the import on **Settings → Data**) so TrustLens has data about your past customers 2. **Open Settings → Alerts & Reports**, switch on **Enable Notifications**, and confirm the **Notification Email** is correct 3. **Place a test order** as a logged-out guest, then check that the new customer appears in **TrustLens → Customers** That's it — TrustLens is now scoring customers, watching for refund and coupon abuse, and protecting checkout against card-testing attacks. Everything else below is optional refinement. --- ## Step 1: Run Historical Sync Without Historical Sync, TrustLens only sees customer behavior from activation onward. New customers will get scored normally, but every customer who has ever ordered from your store before TrustLens was installed will start with a base score of 50 and an empty event history. Historical Sync fixes this by reading existing WooCommerce orders, refunds, and coupon use in small batches. (Past disputes aren't imported; record any you need with the manual chargeback form on the order screen.) ### How to Run It 1. Open **TrustLens → Dashboard** 2. On a new install you'll see the **Get Started with TrustLens** screen; on an existing one, the **Historical Data Sync** card 3. Click **Start Historical Sync** (or **Import past orders**) 4. Processing begins immediately, a small batch of orders at a time 5. Keep a TrustLens page open while it runs — the batches are sent from your browser. If you navigate away, the sync pauses and picks up again the next time you open the Dashboard or **Settings → Data** Prefer not to import history? Click **Skip and analyze new orders only**; you can import past orders later. ### What to Expect | Store Size | Estimated Sync Time | Notes | | --- | --- | --- | | < 1,000 orders | 2–10 minutes | Usually finishes before you've finished reading this guide | | 1,000–10,000 orders | 15–60 minutes | Progress visible on the Dashboard | | 10,000–100,000 orders | 1–6 hours | Runs in batches; no frontend impact | | 100,000+ orders | 6–24 hours | Keep a TrustLens page open; the sync resumes where it left off if interrupted | ### If Sync Stalls If progress hasn't moved for 30+ minutes: - Make sure a TrustLens page showing the sync progress (Dashboard or **Settings → Data**) is open — the sync only advances while one is - Check that a security plugin or firewall isn't blocking `admin-ajax.php` requests from the admin - If a batch errors, the usual causes are a memory limit or a corrupted legacy order — raise `WP_MEMORY_LIMIT` and check `debug.log` - You can safely re-run sync; it rebuilds each customer from their orders rather than adding to existing totals --- ## Step 2: General Settings Go to **TrustLens → Settings → General** (and **Settings → Refunds** for the return thresholds). The defaults are tuned for typical e-commerce stores, but three settings are worth confirming. ### Full-confidence Order Threshold **Default: 3** Below this many orders, most detection modules wait for more history and the Returns signal is scaled down by a sample-size confidence factor (linked-account penalties and the account-age bonus still apply). This prevents noisy false positives on customers with only one or two orders — a single refund on a customer with one order shouldn't drop them into Risk. Raise this to 5 if your store has very generous return policies and you want extra patience; lower to 2 only if you have strong signal quality and need faster classification. ### Return-Risk Thresholds (Settings → Refunds) **Defaults: High risk 40% / Critical risk 60%** (plus a fixed 25% lowest tier) These thresholds set the return-rate tiers of the Returns signal. A customer with a 50% return rate hits the "high" tier and loses score points; a customer at 65% hits "critical" and loses more. TrustLens also compares each customer with your store-wide return rate, so a rate of 30%+ that is double your store's, or 50%+ that is triple, reaches the higher tiers too. The defaults work for most apparel and general retail. If you sell categories with naturally high return rates (e.g. shoes, fashion), consider raising the thresholds 5–10 points. ### Checkout Blocking **Default: Off** (the **Enable Blocking** switch under Blocking Settings) Even after you mark a customer as blocked, checkout enforcement only applies if this master toggle is on. Keep it off while you observe a week or two of scoring, then turn it on once you trust the signals. When enabled, blocked customers cannot complete checkout in either Classic or Blocks / Store API (including pay-for-order), and logged-in blocked customers are also stopped when adding items to the cart. They see your customizable Block Message. --- ## Step 3: Verify Module Defaults Go to **TrustLens → Settings → Detection**. All eight modules are enabled by default. Review them in case any aren't relevant to your store. | Module | Default | When to Disable | | --- | --- | --- | | Return Abuse | Enabled | Never — this is the highest-signal module | | Order Pattern Analysis | Enabled | Rarely; consider disabling only on stores with extremely unusual ordering cadence | | Coupon Abuse | Enabled | If you don't run coupons or new-customer discounts | | Category-Aware Risk | Enabled | If you sell a single product category | | Linked Accounts | Enabled | Rarely; multi-account detection is one of the strongest fraud-ring signals | | Shipping Anomalies | Enabled | If you ship only to a single country and only to billing addresses | | Chargebacks | Enabled | Never — chargeback signals are critical | | Card-Testing Defense | Enabled | Only if you have a separate WAF or gateway-level card-testing protection you trust completely | Several modules have their own sub-settings (coupon limits, the linked-account penalty, the shipping velocity window), and Card-Testing Defense is switched and tuned on its own page. The defaults are sensible — leave them alone for the first two weeks, then revisit once you've seen real scoring data. --- ## Step 4: Card-Testing Defense Tuning Card-Testing Defense ships enabled and starts blocking stolen-card attacks immediately. Two settings are worth a quick look. ### VIP Customer Bypass **Default: On** When on, established customers — those with at least your minimum-orders threshold of completed orders (default 3) who aren't in the Risk or Critical segment — skip velocity checks at checkout. Despite the name, this isn't limited to the literal VIP segment; it protects any proven repeat buyer from being caught by aggressive velocity rules during legitimate bursts (e.g. ordering for a team or restocking quickly). Keep this on unless you have a specific reason to enforce velocity on every customer. ### Velocity Thresholds **Defaults: 3 declines / 60 seconds, 10 submissions / 60 seconds, 8 declines / 1 hour** These trigger a lockout on the attacker's device — 90 seconds the first time, then 15 minutes, 1 hour and 24 hours for repeat offenders. The defaults catch real card-testing botnets aggressively without significantly affecting normal traffic. Only lower them if you've observed an active attack slipping through; only raise them if you have legitimate high-velocity declines (e.g. a payment integration that retries failures aggressively). ### Panic Button From **TrustLens → Card-Testing Defense**, the red **Panic Freeze** button halts all checkouts for a duration you choose (5, 15, or 30 minutes; 15 is the default). Use it if an attack escalates beyond what velocity rules can absorb. The button is one click and reversible — the TrustLens header and Dashboard show the freeze until it lifts or you click **Deactivate Freeze**. A freeze blocks every checkout, including customers covered by VIP bypass. --- ## Step 5: Notifications Go to **TrustLens → Settings → Alerts & Reports**. Notifications are **off by default**: switch on **Enable Notifications** (or the Quick Start "Email me about attacks & high-risk customers" toggle) to receive them. ### Core Notifications (Free) - **Blocked Checkout Alert** — fires when a blocked customer attempts checkout - **Welcome Summary** — one-time email 24 hours after activation showing how many customers were scanned and their risk breakdown (sent even before you enable notifications, if it has customers to report) - **Weekly Summary** — every Monday at 7 AM: orders held, checkouts blocked, and money protected Confirm the **Notification Email** (defaults to your admin email) or point it at a shared ops inbox, then use **Send Test Email** to check delivery. ### Pro Notifications Pro adds 10 advanced notification types — High-Risk Order Alert, Segment Change Alert, Daily Digest, High-Value Order Alert, Repeat Refunder Alert, Velocity Alert, Score Recovery Alert, New Customer Risk Alert, Monthly Revenue Protection Report, and Chargeback Filed Alert. Each can be toggled independently. See [Pro Notification Types](/docs/trustlens/notifications/pro-notification-types/) for details. --- ## Step 6: Chargeback Integration If you process payments through Stripe or WooPayments, TrustLens ingests disputes automatically — no setup required. Card brand, dispute reason, and outcome flow into the Chargeback Monitor as webhooks arrive. ### For Stripe The plugin listens on the standard WooCommerce Stripe webhook endpoint. As long as your Stripe gateway is working, disputes will appear in TrustLens within minutes of being filed. No additional configuration. ### For WooPayments Same — TrustLens hooks into WooPayments' dispute events. ### For Other Gateways If you use PayPal, Square, offline, or a custom gateway, log disputes manually so your monthly ratio stays accurate: 1. Open the disputed order in **WooCommerce → Orders** 2. Click **Record manual chargeback** (below the billing address) 3. Enter the amount, card brand, reason, outcome (Pending, Lost or Won) and, optionally, the response due date 4. Click **Save chargeback** Recorded disputes count toward the monthly chargeback ratio and the per-customer dispute history just like ingested ones. When a pending dispute is decided, use the **Mark won** / **Mark lost** buttons on the same order screen. --- ## Step 7: Place a Test Order The fastest sanity check that everything is wired up: 1. Log out of your store 2. Place a test order as a guest using a test email like `test+trustlens@yourstore.com` 3. In **WooCommerce → Orders**, mark the order **Completed** 4. In WordPress admin, go to **TrustLens → Customers** 5. Search for the email — the customer should appear with a score of 50 (base) and segment Normal 6. Click the customer to see the detail profile, which should show the new order in the event timeline If the customer appears, scoring is working. Issue a partial refund on the test order and watch the score recalculate (within a minute or two — recalculation is queued, not instant). --- ## What to Do in the First Two Weeks TrustLens improves with time and data. In the first two weeks after Historical Sync completes: - **Watch the Dashboard daily** — look at the high-risk customer list and confirm the customers there are ones you'd genuinely want to flag - **Allowlist your known VIPs** — even with the VIP segment, allowlisting locks a customer's score at 100 and prevents any negative signals, which is useful for top customers - **Don't enable checkout blocking yet** — observe first, enforce second - **Tune thresholds if false positives appear** — if you see legitimate customers in Caution or Risk, the return-rate or coupon thresholds may need to move - **Review the Weekly Summary email** — it summarizes orders held, checkouts blocked and money protected; pair it with the Dashboard's segment distribution to see whether scoring matches your gut Once you trust the scoring, enable checkout blocking and configure automation rules (Pro) to act on what you see. --- ## What You Don't Need to Do A few things explicitly do **not** require setup: - **HMAC keys** — none to manage: hashing is keyed with your site's existing WordPress `auth` secret key (if you ever regenerate your WordPress keys, run Historical Sync afterwards to rebuild the hashes) - **Database tables** — created automatically; `dbDelta` handles upgrades - **Action Scheduler** — bundled with WooCommerce; TrustLens just queues into it - **HPOS compatibility** — declared automatically - **Privacy tools** — registered automatically with WordPress's standard export/erase workflow If you've never opened the Settings page, TrustLens is still scoring, still protecting checkout, and still ready to use.