How to Detect & Prevent Affiliate Fraud: 10 Ways to Protect Revenue

What is Affiliate Fraud?

Affiliate fraud occurs when bad actors manipulate an affiliate program to earn commissions fraudulently. This can include fake sign-ups, bot-driven clicks, and stolen data all of which waste ad spend and hurt ROI. Affiliate fraud protection is crucial for ensuring that marketing dollars generate real results.

10 Proven Ways to Detect and Prevent Affiliate Fraud

1. Monitor Traffic Quality

A sudden influx of visitors from an affiliate? Check where they’re coming from. Watch for:

• High bounce rates (visitors leave immediately)
• Unusual geolocations (traffic from unexpected regions)
• Irregular spikes in conversions (sudden lead surges)

If an affiliate’s traffic looks unnatural, investigate before approving commissions.

2. Verify Leads Before Paying Commissions

Not all leads are real. Fraudsters use bots, fake identities, or stolen data to generate fake conversions. To detect and prevent affiliate marketing fraud, validate leads by:

• Checking for duplicate email addresses or phone numbers
• Ensuring real user engagement (activity beyond a single sign-up)
• Verifying that leads meet your customer profile

3. Use Fraud Detection Software

Manual monitoring isn’t scalable. A dedicated fraud solution like Anura provides real-time affiliate fraud detection, filtering out fraudulent traffic before it impacts your revenue. Anura ensures 99.999% accuracy when identifying visitors as bad, eliminating false positives and protecting your ROI.

4. Enforce Strict Affiliate Policies

Affiliates must follow clear terms and conditions that explicitly prohibit fraudulent tactics, such as:

• Fake lead generation
• Unauthorized traffic sources
• Misleading promotions

Enforcing these policies prevents fraudsters from exploiting your program.

5. Analyze Visitor Behavior for Fraudulent Patterns

Fraudulent visitors don’t behave like real customers. Look for:

• Short session durations (leaving after one interaction)
• Multiple sign-ups from the same device
• Click patterns that are too fast to be human

Advanced fraud prevention tools can detect these patterns automatically.

6. Blacklist Known Fraudsters

Once you identify fraudulent affiliates, ban them permanently. Keep a database of flagged affiliates and share insights across networks to prevent affiliate marketing scams from reappearing under different names.

7. Prevent Cookie Stuffing

Cookie stuffing occurs when fraudsters force cookies onto users’ browsers to hijack commissions. To prevent this:

• Use fraud prevention software that detects unauthorized cookies
• Track cookie placements to ensure compliance
• Regularly audit affiliate activity

8. Detect VPN and Proxy Usage

Fraudsters often mask their location using VPNs or proxies to bypass detection. A strong affiliate fraud detection strategy includes flagging:

• Affiliates with multiple IP addresses in different locations
• Traffic from high-risk VPN services
• Users constantly changing IP addresses

Blocking high-risk connections improves affiliate fraud protection.

9. Monitor Duplicate IPs and Devices

If a single IP address is responsible for multiple conversions, that’s a red flag. Repeated use of the same:

• Device ID
• Browser fingerprint
• IP range

…can indicate bot-driven fraud. Identifying these trends helps prevent affiliate fraud before it causes financial damage.

10. Test Transactions Manually

Affiliate fraudsters rarely deliver real customers. Conduct random test transactions to verify an affiliate’s performance. If you find:

• No real interaction beyond sign-up
• Fake or low-quality customer data
• Unusual refund or chargeback patterns

…then you may be dealing with a fraudulent affiliate.

The Best Way to Stop Affiliate Fraud?

Use a proven fraud detection solution. Anura stops affiliate marketing scams before they drain your budget, with unmatched accuracy in real-time fraud prevention.

Want to stop affiliate fraud? Start your free 15-day trial today.