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Question

Conditions Leading to riskAnalysis.reason Being UNEXPECTED_ENVIRONMENT

  • February 9, 2026
  • 0 replies
  • 35 views

cc-harashima

Could someone explain the conditions under which riskAnalysis.reason is set to UNEXPECTED_ENVIRONMENT?

I've read in the document below that

`The event originated from an illegitimate environment.`

https://docs.cloud.google.com/recaptcha/docs/interpret-assessment-website

What criteria are used to determine an illegitimate environment?

There are instances in the log explorer where the same tokenProperties.hostname results in UNEXPECTED_ENVIRONMENT in some cases but not in others.
Is there an internal comparison of IPs happening?
Is there something like a blacklist?
Is there a rate limit imposed on an IP basis?

Without understanding the cause of being marked as UNEXPECTED_ENVIRONMENT, it's challenging to ascertain whether it's a bug and to provide guidance to our customers.

Your feedback would be greatly appreciated.