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Fraudulent website signal Private preview

Evaluate connected account websites for suspicious or misleading content.

The fraudulent website signal evaluates whether a connected account’s website is deceptive or violates policy. This includes websites for accounts that don’t exist yet on Stripe.

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Request an evaluation

Use the Account Evaluations API to trigger a fraudulent website evaluation on demand. You can evaluate an existing connected account or provide account data directly.

Evaluate an existing account

You can evaluate a website for an existing account.

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Evaluate without an existing account

You can evaluate a website before creating a connected account by providing account_details.data with the business URL. The business_url field is the only required field for an entity-less evaluation. You can provide other fields to improve the accuracy of the assessment.

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Webhook events

The evaluation is asynchronous. Listen for:

• v2. signals. account _ signal. fraudulent _ website _ ready when you request a fraudulent website evaluation.
• v2. signals. account _ evaluation. complete when you request multiple signals and want one notification after all results are ready.

These are thin events: data is always {}. Use related_object.id to fetch the related signal or evaluation.

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{
 "id": "acctsig_61UDQe5wRb3w1JgCP16UDQb80xSQmM6vEqeUAlKES",
 "object": "v2.signals.account_signal",
 "type": "fraudulent_website",
 "account_details": {
 "account": "acct_1T42eHAZTJIN1MEb"
 },
 "account_evaluation": "acctevl_61UDQe5wRb3w1JgCP16UDQb80xSQmM6vEqeUAlKES",
 "created": "2026-02-26T00:43:28.000Z",
 "fraudulent_website": {
 "risk_level": "elevated",
 "details": "The website contains several indicators of potential fraud: product listings use vague descriptions inconsistent with industry norms, the contact page lacks a verifiable address, and images appear to be stock photos presented as original product photos."
 }
}

Alternatively, if you received a v2.signals.account_evaluation.complete event, use related_object.id to fetch the full evaluation, which includes the signal result in evaluated_signals:

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{
 "id": "acctevl_61UDQe5wRb3w1JgCP16UDQb80xSQmM6vEqeUAlKES",
 "object": "v2.signals.account_evaluation",
 "account_details": {
 "account": "acct_1T42eHAZTJIN1MEb"
 },
 "requested_signals": ["fraudulent_website"],
 "pending_signals": [],
 "evaluated_signals": {
 "fraudulent_website": {
 "signal": "acctsig_61UDQe5wRb3w1JgCP16UDQb80xSQmM6vEqeUAlKES",
 "evaluated_at": "2026-02-26T00:43:28.000Z",
 "risk_level": "elevated",
 "details": "The website contains several indicators of potential fraud: product listings use vague descriptions inconsistent with industry norms, the contact page lacks a verifiable address, and images appear to be stock photos presented as original product photos."
 }
 }
}

The signal includes the following information:

Note

If the website URL is invalid or unreachable, the evaluation returns a risk level of unknown with an explanation of why we couldn’t complete the evaluation.

Test in a sandbox

You can trigger a fraudulent_website evaluation in a sandbox and receive a deterministic result without waiting for a real website crawl. Use one of the reserved test URLs as the business_url in your evaluation request.

Note

Reserved URLs only work in a sandbox. Live mode always performs a real website evaluation.

Test with an existing account

In a sandbox, update your connected account’s business URL to a reserved test URL, then trigger the evaluation.

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Test with an entity-less evaluation

Pass a reserved test URL as business_url in account_details.data:

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Take action on connected accounts

You can respond to the fraudulent website signals that you receive for a connected account using the Radar tools. See the list of available actions.