Fellow program owners: How do you monitor and deal w/ fraudulent affiliates?
 

So we had this guy sign-up as an affiliate about 60 days ago. Starts sending a bunch of sales right away, very steadily, like several every day.

I was curious about it so I kept looking at the referring URLs (we use NATS 4.1), as I randomly do with affiliate sales anyway, and noticing that all his sales came from the same, solitary blog post on a bunch of differently domained sensualwriter blogs. He only had one single photo of one of our models, and just 2 or 3 written (poorly, at that) sentences.

So I was thinking, maybe this guy just has a ton of traffic from good trades and keywords or whatever.

Sales keep rolling in from him, but I remain curious.

So now, about 60 days later....the CHARGEBACKS are rolling in. In fact, he's now at about a 9% chargeback rate for the number of sales he's sent, and I'm sure it will increase in the coming weeks.

So I think it's safe for me to assume he's banging cards? Or is it? 9% seems pretty high from one affiliate. Our overall CB ratio is only like 1% normally. Is there any way this guy could be anything other than a thief/scammer/cheat?

I've already suspended his account and emailed him about it. No reply as of yet. It's only been a day or so.

Funny, he had just messaged us a few days ago asking when we do our payouts.

I wonder how some of you other program owners out there handle this type of thing. We had a bad problem before with Filipino "chat traffic" people. Nothing but chargebacks. Banned them all. Never again.

I take the time to browse over our sales each day, looking for patterns which might indicate suspicious transactions (i.e. - females names for the credit card), and when I do see ones that look fraudulent, I go right to the biller and refund them.

I also look very closely at each and every chargeback, especially ones from an affiliate sale. If it's a trusted, long-time affiliate, no problem, it happens. Friendly fraud is almost impossible to stop really (guy joins site, enjoys it, then lies to his bank saying he didn't make the purchase and does a CB). If it's a newer affiliate I don't know, I scrutinize it closer.

Also relevant to the discussion is we are now in the midst of trying to set-up our own merchant account to end up with more of our money---instead of those high %'s that go to our 3rd party billers. But with that, comes the added worry of dealing with things like I've described above even more. Which having your own merchant account makes a bit more stressful as you need to keep your CB ration % under a certain level or risk losing the account completely (we'll still keep our 3rd party billers in our cascade of course).

So I'm just curious to hear the thoughts and experiences from some of the other program owners out there on some of this....

No idea but I would be very careful with your own merchant account. It's more than just losing the account, there are some big ass fines if you stay over a certain (very low) chargeback %. In other words, they can take tens of thousands of dollars out of your bank account without asking.

freeze his account and wait for awhile longer to see the what real damage is..
im thinking 9% is just the beginning...

Agreed. I'd actually refund all of his stuff before it gets worse and would have done so before 9%.

don't be paranoid.

Bingo. He's carding. Drop him, refund his sales and save yourself the chargebacks.

Probably not a good idea to post details about how to detect affiliate fraud on a public message board, would just be giving carders info they shouldn't have.

I think this should be discussed privately between program owners.

be paranoid. identity theft is a crime driven by greed.

After just two months of sending you multiple sales every day? Bit impatient, isn't he?

how long is your hold net 180?

:1orglaugh

You posted too much already. You handled it fairly well though. :)

hi, yes it's fraud, have a great night.

Definitely carding.

You don't even do PPS right? Imagine the amount of carders you would get then.

All the big programs have a lot of tools in place to catch these guys, so the carders now target the smaller programs like yours.

maybe add a longer hold-time for your affiliate payouts, and don't offer paxum to new affiliates and don't allow check forwarding service for new affiliates, offer those only to trusted affiliates. That will scare away most carders.

Also don't auto approve account. Go over each site before you approve and if there is any suspicion don't approve the account.

Put a hold on his acct, not worth the headaches. 9% seems pretty high.

He's carding. They even do revshare now day's. I watch our sales daily to hope to catch this shit at an early stage. Ofc there is some software at place too but It's nowhere near fault-proof.

:2 cents:

He's definitely carding. You haven't seen the worse of it if you allow him to continue.

Sounds like a Vietnam carder and if you have 1 you likely have more. :pimp

Good luck I feel your pain (got the same thing couples of weeks ago)

Fraud webmasters stick out like sore thumbs. Don't post anymore about it here, hit me up directly to talk more. Don't post details on the things that make them easy to spot. :2 cents:

Good ones don't until the CBs start rolling in and usually even add in some real joins and traffic to help cover it up.

sounds more like a chatter or a craigslist scammer.

If he was straight up carding the CB ratio would likely be in the 30 to 50% range after 60 days.

check to see if the customer first names are about half women, (or anything over ~5%) that would be a sure sign of carding.

Are the join IP's in the same towns as the billing addresses?

Look at the usernames and email addresses, do they seem legit or made up? Are they 100% free emails or are there some cox/comcast etc. in there?

Many carders now are mixing their carding joins with some legit traffic source to get away with it longer and try to get a pay cycle or two out of the program before they get caught.

Either way it sounds like the traffic may not be right for you, clearly there is something fishy going on but if it's not pure carding, there is a good chance your CB's wont go too much higher.

vdbucks is a paranoic company, stop fucking with people who sending you sales, be respectful to people who sending you sales, stop looking at them like at some criminals! i say be careful doing business with vdbucks, they may fuck your business publicaly only cause they dont know how you run it :2 cents:

re-direct their traffic to your competition pointing to accounts you control.

jk, lol

People can do cb's after 60 days?

you got chargebacks, did you get emails how is possible that those people have been charged without signing up? i doubt so ... so then chargebacks is not problem of traffic, but of content ... wake up

That's strange.. we've only "fucked business publicly" for 1 affiliate. Yes, such an enormous number. And that 1 affiliate got flagged and outted because his idea of promotion is via a password sharing site. Said affiliate then claimed it was a marketing strategy and also claimed he was using fake login info.. yet many live logins were found and as such said affiliate was banned. Also, said affiliate only had a balance somewhere in the ballpark of $26 with us.

You must be said affiliate, and I'm sorry to inform you that if $26 means we "fucked your business publicly" then you have bigger problems.

wtf are you going on about? I think your massive amounts of e-rage is clouding your ability to articulate.

go, refunding possibly legit users is calling ...

Ok, can you please try that one more time? Only this time, in English for the rest of us not in the Eastern Bloc?

Thanks for the sound reply man. That's what I was hoping for with this thread.

Yes, we do look at the email addresses and whatnot to see if they look fishy, and also do cross-check IPs with addresses. Just have to do it a bit more I think. Have mostly been just "spot-checking" randomly.

In the case of this particular affiliate my post is about, I think your thoughts here are spot on:

"Many carders now are mixing their carding joins with some legit traffic source to get away with it longer and try to get a pay cycle or two out of the program before they get caught."

He is sending between 500 and 1000 hits daily according to NATS, so I don't think he was straight-up carding, but perhaps sending some genuine traffic also. That fact has me leery of going ahead and refunding all of his joins outright as some others had suggested here. (I still may do so however)

Another thing interesting about your sentence quoted above; it makes one wonder, what is their business model? Just to get away with it long enough for one or two payouts? Then what? Then you're busted and the payouts stop. Just move on to the next program and hope for another one or two payouts?

To me it doesn't seem like a very sustainable practice. Maybe carding takes such little effort that they don't care much. I don't know.

one rep is enough, dont you think? i just warned people that your business or how you call it may bring them problems, no more debate is needed. just use your brain before you act next time

so, how many emails you received from users he send, telling you their charge was fraud?

Yes, he's definitely teencat or a friend of teencats.

News flash buddy: We don't want our sites "promoted" using free shared username & passwords to our members section. And yes, when we busted you doing it, they were ACTIVE passwords contrary to what you tried to claim.

What are you talking about?

The card owners don't email the website. They see their bank statement, see an unrecognized charge they did not make, call their bank and reverse it.

They probably have no idea what site it's for, as all they'll see on their statement is whatever the billers display on statements (for zombaio its like IOBilling or something).

lol man. still the same song, working this and that. yes, i am using working passwords that is why i am sending sales to my sponsors, like you ... stop putting shit on people who make you money only cause they knows better than you. you had no tos about my methods i used to generate traffic, so stfu finaly

If by "problems", you mean their affiliate accounts with us will be terminated when we BUST them for using ACTIVE passwords to our members areas for "promotion" on their sites, then yes, our business will bring you "problems".

i mean, you think if i give something free, people will but it even if it is free? where is the logic please?

I would for sure refund them, what is the worse that could happen? Someone emails you that you refunded them and they wanted to be a member? Tell them there was a fraud concern and rather then stealing from unknown card holders you chose to refund people, give them a free month, and I bet after that month they join again and stay for a long time. :winkwink:

lol ... yes, i posted passwords to your members area so that is why i send sales to your sites ... oh man, wake the fuck up finaly, people are laughing ...

no more time, work is calling, time will tell ... :)

Another news flash: We reserve the right to run our program how we want. If we don't want "affiliates" like you "promoting" our sites with ACTIVE members area passwords, then we have that right.

You're just upset because you were busted, that's all. Omg, lol, stfu 2! (what are you? a 13-yr old girl?)

lol, yep a carder or chatter. beware of legit traffic referrals mixed in with fake sales. Wizzo and Puma know their stuff. Heed their advice and that of others... don't post the specific details of how to catch these guys. I know its great info for others on this forum, but once they know how you are tracking them, they just change their methods.

My advice: Refund every single sale/rebill this user sent and BAN him and do not accept anymore traffic from this account. To make it easy, contact your biller and ask them to do it for you. This way they see you are proactive.

Good advise, Wizzo, thanks. Sounds logical.

You're right Sharky, going to just refund them all. Thanks.

the password was blocked before it was posted, there was no single hit to members area from my site, tell your brain to accept it finaly. it was blocked by your security before i used it, as always, howgh