What Is TrustLens
TrustLens is a behavior-based customer trust scoring and fraud detection plugin for WooCommerce. It analyzes the order, refund, coupon, dispute, and checkout data your store already generates, turns it into a single 0–100 trust score per customer, and sorts every shopper into one of six risk segments — VIP, Trusted, Normal, Caution, Risk, or Critical. Eight detection modules run quietly in the background so abuse patterns surface before they cost you margin.
Core Capabilities #
TrustLens is built around four ideas: see every customer clearly, catch the abuse patterns that drain margin, give you the data to act, and never auto-block in the free tier without your explicit decision.
Trust Score Engine #
Every customer receives a 0–100 trust score recalculated automatically when behavior changes — a completed or cancelled order, a refund, a coupon order, or a recorded dispute. Scoring runs asynchronously through Action Scheduler (the same background system WooCommerce uses) so it never blocks the frontend. Customers below the configurable Full-confidence Order Threshold (default: 3 orders) are scored cautiously — most modules wait for more history and return risk is confidence-weighted — so new stores don’t get noisy false positives in their first weeks, though a new customer’s score can still move on a refund, a linked account, or tenure.
Six Customer Segments #
The 0–100 scale is split into six clearly defined segments, each with its own color, icon, and recommended treatment:
| Segment | Score | Meaning | Suggested Treatment |
|---|---|---|---|
| VIP | 90–100 | Long-tenured, high-value, low-friction customers | Reward, fast-track, protect from false positives |
| Trusted | 70–89 | Reliable repeat buyers | Normal processing |
| Normal | 50–69 | Average customer, no notable signals | Normal processing |
| Caution | 30–49 | Early warning signs — watch the trend | Monitor, consider optional friction |
| Risk | 10–29 | Behavior pattern consistent with abuse | Hold for review, require verification before fulfilling |
| Critical | 0–9 | Confirmed abuse signals across multiple modules | Manual approval or block |
Eight Detection Modules #
TrustLens ships with eight independent detection modules. Each contributes to the score, so you can see exactly which patterns moved a customer in either direction:
- Return Abuse Detection — return rate against your store baseline, refund value, delivered full refunds and other return patterns, confidence-weighted
- Order Pattern Analysis — completed orders, order value, cancellation patterns
- Coupon Abuse Detection — first-order coupons, coupon-then-refund cycles, coupon usage rate, first-order coupons across linked accounts
- Category-Aware Risk Scoring — category and product context that raises or lowers the return-abuse penalty
- Linked Accounts Detection — accounts sharing shipping/billing addresses, phone numbers, or payment methods (a shared IP or device alone never links accounts)
- Shipping Address Anomalies — address hopping, billing/shipping country mismatches, address-change velocity
- Chargeback Tracking — per-customer dispute history with automatic ingestion from Stripe and WooPayments
- Card-Testing Defense — real-time decline-velocity monitoring at checkout with attacker fingerprint lockouts
Command Center Dashboard #
One screen at TrustLens → Dashboard surfaces the metrics that matter: trust score trends over the last 30 days, segment distribution across all customers, refund activity, the high-risk customer list, live telemetry KPIs, and a chargeback-ratio alert that appears the moment your ratio crosses a Visa, Mastercard, Amex, or Discover monitoring line (Pro adds a live per-network Chargeback Ratio Monitor panel). A persistent plugin-wide admin header gives every page a live status pill, notifications bell, and ⌘K command palette for fast access to any customer, page, or setting.
You Decide What Happens #
TrustLens never auto-blocks in Free. When a customer enters Risk or Critical, you review their profile — every signal that moved their score is shown with its specific reason — and you choose what to do: block at checkout, allowlist forever, hold orders for review, or simply watch the trend. Nothing happens behind your back.
Key Benefits #
| Benefit | Description |
|---|---|
| See the money you’re losing | Refund value, coupon abuse, and chargeback exposure rolled into per-customer numbers you can act on. |
| Protect the customers worth keeping | VIP segmentation and allowlist locking ensure your best customers never get caught by false positives. |
| Stay below card-network thresholds | Monthly chargeback ratio checked against the Visa VAMP, Mastercard ECP, Amex, and Discover lines — an alert in Free, per-network tracking in Pro so you see trouble coming. |
| Stop card-testing attacks live | Real-time decline-velocity detection, attacker fingerprint lockouts, and one-click Panic Freeze if an attack escalates. |
| Explain every decision | Every signal on every score is visible, so CX teams can justify a hold, block, or refund denial with data. |
| No third-party data sharing | All scoring runs inside your WordPress install — no customer data leaves your site, and matching identifiers are pseudonymized with keyed HMAC-SHA256. |
Who Should Use TrustLens? #
- WooCommerce store owners losing margin to serial returners, refund abuse, or coupon fraud
- Operations and CX managers who need data to back up customer policies with confidence
- Fraud prevention teams looking past payment-gateway signals into behavioral patterns
- Merchants worried about chargeback monitoring programs (Visa VAMP / Mastercard ECP)
- Stores with generous return policies that attract both loyal customers and abuse
- Stripe / WooPayments stores where dispute and card-brand data ingest automatically
- Stores on other gateways (PayPal, Square, offline, custom) using manual chargeback entry to keep their ratio accurate
How It Works #
1. Install and Sync #
Activate the plugin, then run Historical Sync from the dashboard. TrustLens reads your existing WooCommerce orders, refunds, and coupon use in small batches and builds a trust profile for every past customer (past disputes aren’t imported — record any you need with manual chargeback entry). The sync runs in the background and does not slow down your storefront.
2. Detection Runs Automatically #
From activation onward, all eight detection modules listen for relevant WooCommerce events — order completed, refund issued, coupon applied, dispute filed, decline received at checkout — and log signals to a customer’s record. Score recalculation is queued automatically with deduplication so a single customer placing five orders in a minute is recalculated once, not five times.
3. Review Risk and Act #
The Dashboard surfaces customers who need attention. The Customer Detail page shows the full event timeline, every signal that contributed to the score, linked accounts, and a return-rate trend chart. From there you can block at checkout, add to the allowlist, leave admin notes, or trigger a manual recalculation.
4. Automate (Pro) #
Pro adds an automation engine with 16+ triggers, 30+ condition fields, and async-dispatched actions. Rules fire when risk changes — e.g. “If chargeback filed and trust score < 30, send Slack alert and block customer.” A save-time validator blocks rules that can never fire so you don’t discover broken automation only when an attack lands.
Free vs Pro Comparison #
| Feature Category | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Detection | ||
| All 8 detection modules | ✓ | ✓ |
| Trust scoring engine (0–100, 6 segments) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Per-customer signal visibility | ✓ | ✓ |
| Account-age loyalty bonus | ✓ | ✓ |
| Advanced address-diversity analysis | — | ✓ |
| Card-Testing Defense | ||
| Real-time velocity detection | ✓ | ✓ |
| Panic Freeze button | ✓ | ✓ |
| VIP customer bypass | ✓ | ✓ |
| Auto-escalation to global Panic Freeze | — | ✓ |
| Geographic-diversity safeguard | — | ✓ |
| Fingerprint / IP CIDR allowlists | — | ✓ |
| 12-font advanced fingerprint signal | — | ✓ |
| Attack History tab + CSV export | — | ✓ |
| Slack + email attack alerts | — | ✓ |
| Chargeback Monitor | ||
| Chargeback-ratio alert when a network line is crossed | ✓ | ✓ |
| Stripe / WooPayments auto-ingestion | ✓ | ✓ |
| Manual dispute entry | ✓ | ✓ |
| Per-brand Visa/MC/Amex/Discover breakdown | — | ✓ |
| 12-month trend chart | — | ✓ |
| Trailing-30-day window | — | ✓ |
| Dispute Evidence Report (print-ready) | — | ✓ |
| Auto-block after N lost disputes | — | ✓ |
| Daily ratio email alerts | — | ✓ |
| Customer Management | ||
| Trust badges on WooCommerce orders list | ✓ | ✓ |
| Customer detail profile | ✓ | ✓ |
| Block / Allowlist / Bulk actions | ✓ | ✓ |
| Checkout enforcement (Classic + Blocks) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Order-edit-screen trust display | ✓ | ✓ |
| Automation | ||
| Automation rules engine | — | ✓ |
| 16+ triggers, 30+ condition fields | — | ✓ |
| HMAC-SHA256 signed webhooks | — | ✓ |
| Async dispatch with retries | — | ✓ |
| Save-time validator + rule inspector | — | ✓ |
| Notifications & Reports | ||
| Core email notifications (block, weekly, activation) | ✓ | ✓ |
| 10 advanced notification types | — | ✓ |
| Scheduled reports (daily/weekly/monthly) | — | ✓ |
| Payment Method Risk Controls | — | ✓ |
| Platform | ||
| REST API (8 endpoints) | ✓ | ✓ |
| WooCommerce HPOS compatible | ✓ | ✓ |
| GDPR privacy export / erasure | ✓ | ✓ |
| Historical Sync | ✓ | ✓ |
| Priority support | — | ✓ |
The WordPress.org download is the complete plugin — no trial limits, no disabled scoring, no locked modules. Everything in the Free column above ships in the free release.
Technical Requirements #
| Requirement | Minimum | Recommended |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress | 6.4 | 6.8+ |
| WooCommerce | 8.0 | 9.5+ |
| PHP | 7.4 | 8.1+ |
| MySQL | 5.6 | 8.0+ |
| MariaDB | 10.1 | 10.6+ |
| PHP Memory Limit | 128 MB | 256 MB+ |
Compatibility #
- HPOS Compatible — Full support for WooCommerce High-Performance Order Storage
- Classic + Blocks Checkout — Unified Request Gate intercepts both Shortcode and Store API checkouts through one rule surface
- Stripe + WooPayments — Native dispute and card-brand ingestion via webhooks
- Other gateways — Manual dispute entry keeps your ratio accurate on PayPal, Square, offline, and custom gateways
- Block + Classic themes — No frontend dependencies on theme markup
Privacy and Data Handling #
TrustLens runs entirely inside your WordPress and WooCommerce installation. It does not send customer data to Webstepper or to any default third-party service. External delivery only happens if you explicitly configure webhooks, Slack alerts, or email notifications. (The one default outbound call is Pro’s optional dispute-report verification, which sends a non-personal fingerprint of a generated report and can be switched off.)
- Customer matching keys are pseudonymized with keyed HMAC-SHA256 hashes, keyed with your site’s own WordPress secret, so they can’t be reversed or matched across sites (the customer’s email is stored alongside so you can see who you’re acting on)
- Linked-account fingerprints (address, phone, IP, payment method, device) use the same keyed-hash approach
- WordPress privacy tools are fully integrated — customers can request export or erasure through the standard WordPress workflow, and TrustLens returns signals, fingerprints, category stats, and automation logs
- GDPR-compatible by design
Architecture Highlights #
- Modular Detection — Each detection type is a self-contained module that can be toggled independently
- Asynchronous Scoring — Action Scheduler queues score recalculations with deduplication so duplicate triggers collapse into one job
- Unified Request Gate — A single rule-registration surface intercepts both Classic and Blocks / Store API checkout
- Cached Dashboard Data — chargeback ratios cached for 15 minutes (the trend for 1 hour) and the high-risk list for 5 minutes, invalidated automatically on new events
- Security First — Nonce verification, capability checks, prepared statements, and keyed-hash pseudonymization throughout
- WordPress Standards — Follows WordPress and WooCommerce coding standards; no framework dependencies
