hi suprgeek, I'm the op (and CEO of Sift Science). it's true - we do not have any rules in our product. we believe that rules can serve as an effective short-term solution, or for special cases, e.g. prematurely blocking a massive wave of fraud from an IP address because you know it's coming.

but, rules are rather easy for fraudsters to circumvent, and they require merchants to play whack-a-mole. with today's technologies, it's easier than ever to analyze massive amounts of data, and we believe that machine learning can go a really long way in detecting fraud.

does that make sense? happy to discuss further, and we'd be happy to put you in touch with our customers if you'd like to hear more about our results.