I'm worried about fraud

[Grunger]

I am an advertiser and I place offers in various affiliate programs and ad networks. More and more I come across fake registrations. Do affiliate marketers use VPS / VDS? They use virtual computers for new registrations for which I pay money? Why do affiliate programs and their fraud tracking people allow this? Isn't there a way to deal with it? Thanks.

 

[Graybeard]

What does "Come Across" mean exactly --is there a pattern that can be matched somehow?
The obvious it to block the IP ranges of known datacenters and proxies.
Backdoor residential proxies have become commonplace XFORWARD FOR PHP at DuckDuckGo this may work and it may not. ...

 

[azgold]

Do affiliate marketers use VPS

Yup, they do. It gives them greater control and speed for running their campaigns and we recommend they use one, legitimately and ethically.

However, I'm sure there are some people in the world who use them for naughty purposes.

We run across this issue (bad/fake sign ups) with forum registrations from time to time. Awhile back, we started manually approving registrations, so we usually catch them before they get in, especially if they've been flagged in the spam reporting databases that we use.

 

[RichAds]

I am an advertiser and I place offers in various affiliate programs and ad networks. More and more I come across fake registrations. Do affiliate marketers use VPS / VDS? They use virtual computers for new registrations for which I pay money? Why do affiliate programs and their fraud tracking people allow this? Isn't there a way to deal with it? Thanks.

Hi! To prevent fraud in ad networks you can check if the traffic is verified by any third-party services, for example, AdScore. It's a nice guarantee that traffic is 100% high-quality and users are real.

 

[merjoon]

this is the nature of affiliate marketing.
no need to be shocked
you may check fraudlogix as well.

 

[T J Tutor]

If your IP has no hostname you can't use most (if not all mail servers) so how could you possibly be a person?

EXACTLY EXACTLY EXACTLY!

What about building an addon and/or plugin for site owners for the trap, a that has a built in module for monitoring our ads on site and elsewhere? Achievable? I have to ask my team about this.

 

[Graybeard]

If I were you I would hire a competent developer

10     $ip = ($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
11       $hostname = gethostbyaddr($ip);
12
13      if (preg_match('/[a-z]+/' , $hostname)){ $var=1; }
14         else{$var=0;}
15
16 if($var==0){echo "<p>you're banned!<br>";}
17     elseif($var==1){
18                     they ok
19     }

In most cases the hostname look-up takes 200ms -300ms so that delay may be unacceptable at very high volumes (I micro timed it )

These fraud scrubber 'tools' are half-assed and over-hyped from the ad networks I have tested that claim they used them --they are 50%? effective (maybe)

Little secret here, I will disclose: If your IP has no hostname you can't use most (if not all mail servers) so how could you possibly be a person?

The one weakness in this method is some servers do have a reverse address and a hostname.You have to 403 those by that AS block that datacenter or hosting company belongs. I know who they are --but it has to be updated now and then.

• Draconian --Maybe
  
• Effective --Yes
  
• Bulletproof --No

 

[T J Tutor]

You could make an api like that (I suppose)

We are re-launching our AffKit next week. Over the next few months we are adding a load of new tools. I'm having our dev team look into this.

As far a a 'plugin' goes that's WordPress --that involves a knowledge of the intricacies of W-P codex LOL (not for me )

Yeah, my dev guys don't do this either, I'll have to get another guy on the team for any WP stuff we decide to support or offer.

 

[Graybeard]

That said, (too many edits of the above already :
What I am seeing with the push ads I am buying (testing) is

• The ads are sent but I am not billed for those that they detect as fraud
  --that's good from an ad spend POV.
• However, they are still reaching my servers and need to be filtered out as 'suspicious'

The above is only proven with pops and push last week by me ...

**YOUR RESULTS MAY DIFFER

 

[tyoussef]

I am an advertiser and I place offers in various affiliate programs and ad networks. More and more I come across fake registrations. Do affiliate marketers use VPS / VDS? They use virtual computers for new registrations for which I pay money? Why do affiliate programs and their fraud tracking people allow this? Isn't there a way to deal with it? Thanks.

make sure you cap all of offers until you check the quality of each affiliate than you can left the cap on them little by little, that's the best thing.
then of course you will have your own bot detector system that will help you as well.

 

[Amin Gharehchaei]

My company actually been working on something similar, one suggestion would be to use the Maxminds Residential Database (cost money) but to check each visitor and if they do not have residential ips then do not allow them to register or even see your site.

Our expertise is in IP delivery really overall, coming from cloaking sites for google spiders and sending humans elsewhere. so if you need any Tips and tricks I be happy to chat in Telegram or something

Best,
Amin

 

[Graybeard]

You could make an api like that (I suppose)
I made a click monitor in xhr/AJAX to monitor the both the click action from a landing page(s) and to have a log to compare against an offer(website) that provided click stats.

Worked and showed just a minimal sent/deliver count variation.

As far as a 'plugin' goes; that's WordPress --that involves a knowledge of the intricacies of W-P codex LOL (not for me )

 

[Graybeard]

Maxminds Residential Database (cost money) but to check each visitor and if they do not have residential ips then do not allow them to register or even see your site.

On the surface that may seem like a good idea however some proxy apps have backdoors that might be used for exploits --rather remote. We used MaxMinds's mini-fraud lookup database for credit card transactions --$387/mo and not that effective really.
I like the idea of a residential IP requirement lookup --makes sense --only accept what you expect is the bast way to go
good resources
Comprehensive IP address data, IP geolocation API and database - IPInfo.io
Team Cymru

 

[Graybeard]

Bad news on residential IP anti-fraud detection!
(evader bots)/(total traffic received) my server
(1027+9+16)/(55110 +3029 +21214 )
.0132
1.32% slipped through my network of bot traps

That's not that bad as none of them recorded as hits with clickbank --just checked --what scrubbing clickbank is using IDK --this only applies to LP click throughs.

**important part to me is to be able to judge the viability of offers --real traffic counted does matter