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“Adavice”/  “CPA

Fraud affiliates

BobanV

BobanV

Affiliate Manager
Affiliate Manager
Affilicom
Hi guys,

There have been a lot of fraudulent activity on our network recently, so wanna share that with you guys. I am trying to avoid this as much as I can of course, but I guess you will never gonna rid of it.

Got pretty upset cause we are loosing reputation. Anyway guys, look for free email providers, short answers, usual names...Anything that seems suspicious.

Please feel free to share your experience - it's in everyone's interest!

Thanks,

Boban
 
BobanV said:
Hi guys,

There have been a lot of fraudulent activity on our network recently, so wanna share that with you guys. I am trying to avoid this as much as I can of course, but I guess you will never gonna rid of it.

Got pretty upset cause we are loosing reputation. Anyway guys, look for free email providers, short answers, usual names...Anything that seems suspicious.

Please feel free to share your experience - it's in everyone's interest!

Thanks,

Boban
Click to expand...

I'm not a network person so maybe this unrealistic but can you cap new affiliates until they've proven the quality of their traffic?
 
azgold said:
I'm not a network person so maybe this unrealistic but can you cap new affiliates until they've proven the quality of their traffic?
Click to expand...

Of course. Anyway, if you cap them to 5 conversions per day, they can make 30-40 till you get a feedback from advertiser. And if you cap them to 5 conversions in total, then you can loose potentially good affiliate till you get feedback.
If that makes sense?
 
Capping is not the solution. On the contrary. It enhances the problem and motiviates fraud publishers to make duplicate accounts. At the same time it punishes good affiliates.

You can never eliminate fraud as a whole but what you can do is first of all calling your affiliates and submitting them to a phone interview before you approve them. That will already greatly filter the fraudsters. Other measures you can take are

Implement an anti-fraud system (SaaS software). We work with Forensiq to filter not only our traffic sources but also our publisher sign up process so we get a better view on who we work with.

Analyze IPs. Most fraudsters will drive multiple conversions from the same IP, which never happens on a good traffic source. Or the IPs will be very similar and go in ascending/descending order.

Analyze conversion rates. If the conversion rate of any given traffic source is significantly higher than the average conversion rate on your campaign, then this could be an indication of fraud. I put this measure on the last place in our list because most fraudsters are smart enough to not drive insanely high conversion rates - they know affiliate networks look at this.
 
Agreed. Anyway, the problem here is to try to prevent it before they come to network.
I saw some suspicious behavior and I noted advertiser and they checked and report that it's fraud. Even though I did a good job there, we still sent some invalid leads.
So the challenge is in interviewing and finding frauds before approving them and monitoring their activity.
We are on HasOffers by the way and we have some fraud system but that cannot help. These guys know it.

My conclusion is that interview should be very very strict and we should always ask for references. Even screenshots are not working.

Boban
 
Addiliate.com said:
Capping is not the solution. On the contrary. It enhances the problem and motiviates fraud publishers to make duplicate accounts. At the same time it punishes good affiliates.

You can never eliminate fraud as a whole but what you can do is first of all calling your affiliates and submitting them to a phone interview before you approve them. That will already greatly filter the fraudsters. Other measures you can take are

Implement an anti-fraud system (SaaS software). We work with Forensiq to filter not only our traffic sources but also our publisher sign up process so we get a better view on who we work with.

Analyze IPs. Most fraudsters will drive multiple conversions from the same IP, which never happens on a good traffic source. Or the IPs will be very similar and go in ascending/descending order.

Analyze conversion rates. If the conversion rate of any given traffic source is significantly higher than the average conversion rate on your campaign, then this could be an indication of fraud. I put this measure on the last place in our list because most fraudsters are smart enough to not drive insanely high conversion rates - they know affiliate networks look at this.
Click to expand...

I agree with you but up to some extent, the last point which you raised I don't agree to that, I don't want networks to raise suspicion on publishers if the conversion rates are higher than usual. I, being a publisher have the history of highest conversion rates. I think it will be unfair if networks start pointing fingers on those who have high conversion rates. As @BobanV said, yes, there should be a strict interview before approving new publishers.

I am still trying to get an account on Peerfly (@LukePeerFly) & a4d.com but they are asking for a network reference which I can't provide because I never find my AM online. Never.

I am just keeping my point, Peace!!!

s2L35PL.png


Regards
IndeXer
 
IndeXer said:
I don't think they will, as we can easily inspect element it.

Regards
INdeXer
Click to expand...

Bummer. It's frustrating not being able to contact an AM! Is there another method of contact to get a msg to your AM to contact you? Maybe Support, Skype, Phone or Email?

Just thinking of possible solutions and typing at the same time...:)
 
azgold said:
Bummer. It's frustrating not being able to contact an AM! Is there another method of contact to get a msg to your AM to contact you? Maybe Support, Skype, Phone or Email?

Just thinking of possible solutions and typing at the same time...:)
Click to expand...

Trust me, if there's any possibility then I would have opted it, I hateeeeee my AM, the only reason for using MaxBounty is I always get paid on or before time.

I have her Skype but she is always offline, I never tried to reach her via phone as English is not my first language. Let me know if you found a successful way to contact AM anytime soon.

Regards
IndeXer
 
IndeXer said:
Trust me, if there's any possibility then I would have opted it, I hateeeeee my AM, the only reason for using MaxBounty is I always get paid on or before time.

I have her Skype but she is always offline, I never tried to reach her via phone as English is not my first language. Let me know if you found a successful way to contact AM anytime soon.

Regards
IndeXer
Click to expand...

Hey, it doesn't matter if she is offline, my AM from another network is offline all the time too but he is responding sometimes. What else you can do...You can contact support too and complain about your AM. It's in their interest that she is fast responsive.

And by the way, I would like to hear something about fraud cause that's the subject of our post :)

Best,

Boban
 
Hey guys,

Sharing some of my experience.
Many of those fraudsters use one and the same text, edited only a little.
I've managed to find their patterns here:
Hướng dẫn reg nét thành công
The second thing is they love to contact you before you review their application.
The all use VPN when signing up, so check the IPs carefully.
They claim to own old-fashioned, unattractive websites with 0 viewers per day.
The prefer to choose the US, the UK and India as their residence country but their English is very google-translator like or even worse.
If you approve them, be ready to monitor their activity. Some of them begin with making 'conversions' immediately. See the scheme 1 click - 1 conversion for 5 or more offers? Ban them now!
 
The conversion rate red flag would be if your CR is at least double that of the average CR across a range of well-established and proven affiliates. If its just 20-30-40% higher it wont raise flags, at most a question from your AM.

Dont hesitate to sign up to our network as publisher so you get full access to our +850 global offers. We offer weekly payments to our (good) affiliates!


IndeXer said:
I agree with you but up to some extent, the last point which you raised I don't agree to that, I don't want networks to raise suspicion on publishers if the conversion rates are higher than usual. I, being a publisher have the history of highest conversion rates. I think it will be unfair if networks start pointing fingers on those who have high conversion rates. As @BobanV said, yes, there should be a strict interview before approving new publishers.

I am still trying to get an account on Peerfly (@LukePeerFly) & a4d.com but they are asking for a network reference which I can't provide because I never find my AM online. Never.

I am just keeping my point, Peace!!!

s2L35PL.png


Regards
IndeXer
Click to expand...
 
Message me on skype and ill tell you how MonsterAds prevent fraud affiliates joining. Its a very very rare occurrence as we vet all our applications in great depth. I would explain here but i dont want to make it public. Surely fraud affiliates reading this will figure out ways around it
 
We have a theory regarding Emails that are ending with @outlook.com.

We had some past experience with affiliates with that email endings.

Anyone had any slimier cases?
 
No, I maybe wasn't clear enough.
We noticed a certain pattern of affiliates using emails where the name is all capitals and ending is @outlook.com.
We have over 10 affiliates with these email and all of them were fraud.
 

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