Affiliate Fraud?
 

Since we've been a private invite only program we haven't ever had to deal with affiliate fraud but now that we are public a lot of fucks are frauding.. they're very good at it too.. Anyone have any suggestions for dealing with it?

Randomly call purchasers on new affiliate accounts or large accounts to ensure they ordered their subscription.

How do you know? 1:1 CB? or 100% cancel before trials expire?

Yeah.. can't really ask for the customer's phone # on sign up which sucks... but it's possible to look them up other places.. Good idea.. thx :)

Usually people who fraud actually have a better ratio than people who don't, actually.. so it's not 100% cancel..

Call and ask their wives if the purchase was legitimate instead of the guy who bought it to be really really sure.

We have seen the same issues arising unfortunately ... if your in control of your own data that makes life easier as you can start to get some reports built that will show you trends, but after that it's a daily chore of having to watch for those guy's that are wildly out'a the norm boundries.

In the memo section of their checks put "Thanks For The Blowjob, Love Timmy, Age 9"

Send over a couple boys to "Talk" to him

Only other way is to email them with the same question if the phone is a little awkward.

Call ALL Affiliates on the phone.

Cancel and refund all members who do not log in to members section.

Put new affiliates s you do not know or do not have a valid refferal for on a 3rd party processer first

Check url referrers generally if it looks to good to be true its a carder.

hahahahahaha cutter tgps with just your banners converting at 1:89 are a good give away.

some very good ideas there :thumbsup

hahahahahaha cutter = cook ie cutter sorry

We've (er I hope succesfully) dealt somewhat with this.

Things to do that are simple idiot-check - don't let sign up directly with your processor. Keep a back-end database which does that. Verify simple basic stuff - like verify signup country, check ssn, etc. I won't be too specific since our setup is proprietary and not too many details get publicized :-)

Have a problem with jerk#1 at an IP address? Chances are jerk#2 is on the same IP and trying to defraud you. Create a negative database to deal with it.

If it's really bad, manually verify signups for your aff program. DON'T use your processors referral since in some cases even killed sponsors have links go through. Stay in control of your data and connections. Imp. Going offline now 92621328 but if you have questions about how to set something like this icq me.

-doug

Calling affiliates is a bad idea, the others are pretty good though.

Can you tell me your reasoning behind this?

I talk to most of the people I send traffic to on the phone. If an affiliate had a problem getting a phone call I would be suspicious.

If he is hiding what he does from spouse, family, etc then he prolly does not treat this like a business and I dont need his join a day :)

Pardon my n00bness but Do REVSHARE programs have the same degree of fraud problems as PPS?

Go ahead and call. Just don't say, "This is Phil and Cum Drinking Sluts is converting killer for you. I would like to talk about it." I hate that crap on the machine.

generally not
a scumbag will cheat for $30-40 for the signup but not $1-2 for the trial signup

This is a very good idea and goes a long ways.

hahahaha and some people will still cash them

then get checks with pictures of girls sucking horse dicks on them....

Randomly verifying orders is good idea. Mainstream merchants do it very frequently. 1 out of 3 products or services we order is verified by phone or through email. (don't ask me how the last can be accurate way, because i havent figured either)

Due to the adult factor it should be done in the most possible discreet way. A gpod idea is to let the customer know immediately after his purchase that his order is gonna be verified by phone within the next X minutes. This way he won't be surprised.

We have done this before.. We had more bitching, complaints, and webmasters say they did not want us calling again because of it.

We would call, ask for the person, once we had them on the phone we would say hello, this is blah from x company (non porn name) and say that they are an "webmaster" of our program, most would ask which program, we would tell them and they would proceed to inform us that they did not like the idea of us calling them, if they want to talk then e-mail them or ICQ/AIM.

Atleast 40% would complain.

90% of a programs webmasters are small, work at home, webmasters, not in an office or even running a real business.

The office set webmasters, other programs, bigger webmaster didn't care that we called.

Oh ya.. A good % of the us/canadian webmasters we called, were sleeping at 3pm. Go figure.

i suppose you could make them call you before activating their account.

i know of a company that does this...

No.. Not even close.

So which part do you think the fraud lies in?

Office set or sleeping at 3pm?

Nope. It's harder to cheat a revshare...not impossible...but harder...and there's less money in it.

I don't mind if a sponsor calls me before accepting me into his program, actually i'm starting to expect it, shows if a sponsor is serious. However it would piss me off if they called to push a new site on me or something like that.

I got hit on a revshare for 5k one month from some cook ie cutter tgp with banner that was promoting no trial tours and converting at 1:100.


I was stupid.

BTW they were all from Toronto.

I have never seen fraud from another paysite program owner.

Things I have seen..
1) Redirect mail box accounts, with a US business name and US phone number that goes to a call center. Toronto and NY seems to be the biggest problem areas with this type of setup. From what I can figure out, these guys use the same US company name as the company they have in another country.

2) American webmasters that send real joins mixed with BS joins on personal/friend credit cards and they do it in a little ring. You could call them and they will talk and you still have no idea of the fraud.

Yes, one of the biggest and best out there does and has done for quite a while?

Not a bad idea, guess that could work :)

I have an account with just about every program that I know of and I don't think I have ever had a phone call...

Even though Python did call me one day but it was to market their content to me.. Kinda pissed me off.

I agree 100% I have seen both first hand. I just think calling will help some what.

some awesome advice.