Spy Blocker is a security app you must install from the Apps market before its settings become available. Once installed and activated, it monitors your storefront for content-scraping behaviour and bans the visitor's IP address when suspicious activity is detected. Go to Apps, find Spy Blocker in the Security & Privacy collection, install it, then click the settings icon to configure it.
What Spy Blocker detects
The app description explains: "Spy blocker watches for right-click, dev-tools, and bulk image fetch, then bans the IP before the catalog is saved." Specifically, the app detects:
- Attempts to right-click on images or content to save or copy them.
- Opening browser developer tools on the storefront.
- Bulk fetching of images in patterns consistent with automated scraping.
When any of these behaviours are detected, the visitor's IP is banned immediately. The ban is recorded and appears in Settings > Banned sessions as an IP-type ban.
Activating Spy Blocker
After installing the app, open its settings. A single toggle labelled Activate controls the entire feature. The description reads: "Once the Spy Blocker is activated, all attempts to copy text, download images, or interact with your page in unauthorized ways will be immediately blocked." Enable the toggle and click Save.
Viewing detected spies
Below the activation toggle, the settings panel shows a Spies table listing all IPs that have been banned by the app. Each row shows:
- IP: the banned IP address with the detection date and time in your store's timezone.
- Country: the country flag for the IP.
- Browser: the browser used at the time of detection.
- OS: the operating system.
- Device: the device type.
- VPN/Proxy: whether a VPN or proxy was detected at the time, shown as Detected or Undetected.
The table is paginated at 20 rows per page, ordered by detection date newest first.
Deleting spy records
Tick the checkboxes next to the entries you want to remove and use the Delete spies dropdown action. Deleting a spy record removes it from this list. To release the underlying IP ban so the visitor can access your store again, go to Settings > Banned sessions and release the ban from there. See Sessions and banned sessions for details.
Notes
- Spy Blocker only bans IP addresses, not individual devices. The Shield app handles device-level bans.
- Bans from Spy Blocker appear in Settings > Banned sessions under the IP type, regardless of whether Spy Blocker is currently installed or active.
- Disabling Spy Blocker stops new detections but does not release any existing bans.