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. So 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 are often targets.

- 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 generates 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 eg. Steve1@hotmail.com, Steve2@hotmail.com, Steve3@hotmail.com

- Use the network’s anti -fraud measure Lycos solution (suitable for lead based programmes only) which when activated will only track one sale, per day, per affiliate, per IP address

- 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, ie. 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. We are more than happy to discuss this issue in more detail so please contact your relevant account manager or a member of the Account Development team at accountdevelopment@affiliatewindow.com if you require further assistance in this area.

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This entry was posted by Kirsty Grimes on Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 at 5:49 pm and is filed under AWin Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.