---
title: "Contact and IP checks for ecommerce stores"
url: "https://lookvalid.com/industries/ecommerce.md"
canonical_url: "https://lookvalid.com/industries/ecommerce"
last_updated: "2026-10-18"
type: "conceptual"
summary: "Check the email domain, the phone number and the connecting IP on every new order or account."
related: ["https://lookvalid.com/industries.md", "https://lookvalid.com/products/email-domain-check.md", "https://lookvalid.com/industries/financial.md", "https://lookvalid.com/industries/education.md"]
---

# Contact and IP checks for ecommerce stores

Check the email domain, the phone number and the connecting IP on every new order or account.

Check the email domain, the phone number and the connecting IP on every new order or account, and read the domain of any seller or marketing site that shows up in your queue. You get a short set of facts to route an order for a second look or let it straight through.

## The problem

A store collects an email and a phone number at checkout, and both are typed by people in a hurry. Typos, throwaway domains and numbers with the wrong country prefix turn into failed shipping notices, bounced receipts and support tickets that start with the wrong address.

Orders also come from networks that tell you something. A checkout from a hosting range or an anonymising network, paired with a shipping address half a world away, is worth a look before the parcel leaves the warehouse.

Merchants rarely have time to build this. A single call per signal, returning the same shape every time, fits into an order webhook and gives the person reviewing the queue facts to work from.

The US Census Bureau estimated US retail e-commerce sales at $340.2 billion, or 17.1 percent of total retail sales, in the second quarter of 2026 (seasonally adjusted, not adjusted for price changes). (Q2 2026; [US Census Bureau, Quarterly Retail E-Commerce Sales](https://www.census.gov/retail/ecommerce.html), read 2026-10-18.)

## What LookValid does for this

- [Catch bad addresses at checkout](https://lookvalid.com/products/email-domain-check.md): Reads the domain behind the address: MX records, SPF, DMARC and flags for disposable domains, free providers and role mailboxes. It does not contact the mail server, so it cannot confirm a given mailbox exists. (1 credit per address checked)
- [Format phone numbers for shipping carriers](https://lookvalid.com/products/phone.md): Returns E.164 and national formats, the country and the number type the plan assigns. It is a numbering-plan check and cannot say whether the line is active. (1 credit per valid number)
- [See the network behind the order](https://lookvalid.com/products/ip.md): Returns location, time zone, network owner and flags for hosting ranges and Tor exit nodes from open data. Compare it with the billing and shipping country and treat it as one signal among others. (1 credit per lookup)
- [Read the contacts a seller publishes](https://lookvalid.com/products/website-contacts-scraper.md): For marketplace or wholesale teams, reads a domain public pages and returns the emails, phone numbers and social profile links they publish, so you can compare them with what an applicant gave you. (10 credits per domain with contacts found)

## A real request and response

This request looks up the address an order came from. The response shows where the address is located, who runs the network and whether it sits in a hosting range.

```json
{
  "ip": "8.8.8.8"
}
```

Real response, captured 2026-10-18:

```json
{
  "found": true,
  "data": {
    "ip": "8.8.8.8",
    "version": 4,
    "country": "US",
    "region": "California",
    "city": "Mountain View",
    "latitude": 37.422,
    "longitude": -122.085,
    "timezone": null,
    "asn": 15169,
    "asn_org": "Google LLC",
    "is_hosting": true,
    "hosting_provider": "Google",
    "is_tor": false,
    "is_vpn": null,
    "risk_score": 25,
    "risk_factors": [
      {
        "factor": "hosting_provider",
        "points": 25,
        "description": "The address belongs to a cloud or hosting provider (Google), where traffic is often automated."
      }
    ],
    "attribution": "IP geolocation by DB-IP"
  }
}
```

## Questions

### Can the email check tell me if an order email is real?

It tells you about the domain: whether it has mail servers, what its SPF and DMARC records say and whether it is a disposable or free provider. It never contacts the mail server, so it cannot confirm that the specific mailbox exists.

### Does an IP flag mean an order is bad?

No. A hosting range or a Tor exit node is a fact about the network. Plenty of ordinary shoppers use VPN and corporate networks, so use the flags to route an order for review next to other signals.

### Where does the IP location data come from?

Location data comes from DB-IP Lite, which is licensed CC BY 4.0, and risk flags come from open lists. The attribution is returned with every result so you can show it where you display the data.

## Sources

- [US Census Bureau, Quarterly Retail E-Commerce Sales](https://www.census.gov/retail/ecommerce.html), read 2026-10-18

## Related

- [LookValid for your industry](https://lookvalid.com/industries.md)
- [Email Domain Check API](https://lookvalid.com/products/email-domain-check.md)
- [Contact and network checks for financial firms](https://lookvalid.com/industries/financial.md)
- [Contact and domain checks for education](https://lookvalid.com/industries/education.md)