Handling Affiliate Fraud

From Wiki

Protect your Affiliate Programme Against Fraud

We are all aware that online fraud takes place, so we want to take every precaution necessary to ensure it doesn't happen to you. We've put together various steps merchants can take to put those extra barriers in place especially for lead based programmes and programmes offering a high CPA which may be targeted.

• Manually approve new affiliates

• Regularly check your account and make sure no sales auto validate in error

• Check for unnaturally high basket values, or multiple sales generated by the same IP address

• If you pay for new customer sign ups then look out for sequential/ randomly generated e-mail addresses, which could indicate suspicious activity e.g. Steve1@hotmail.com, Steve2@hotmail.com, Steve3@hotmail.com

• Use the network's anti -fraud measure Lycos solution (suitable for lead based programmes only) to restrict leads to one per IP address per day

• Do not validate until 100% sure of the authenticity of the transaction

• Carefully check all order details, as the network is only able to view order references and IP address details

• Pass the network a unique identifier for each lead to ensure accurate tracking

Some more tell tale signs a merchant could look out for (please note these are just examples and NOT definite examples of fraudulent activity).

• Can you see a banner or text link on the affiliate site? If not then it is important to understand where the traffic is coming from, so we recommend finding out more information from the affiliate.

• Has the affiliate just registered and is now sending through lots of leads ?

• Are numerous sales suddenly coming from one affiliate?

• Are leads coming from the same IP address?

• Have you noticed leads being generated at a strange time of the day, i.e. 10 leads at 3.am?

If you have identified a few of the points above on your programme then we would strongly suggest further investigation.