CPA Networks Perspective on Fraudulent Affiliates
posted by admin on July 21, 2010 at 6:17 pm2 Comments

As the owner of a CPA Network, I have noticed that there is a severe epidemic of fraudulent affiliates roaming around the internet, moving from CPA/affiliate network to network. A rough estimation based on sign ups that I’ve dealt with at CPATrend is showing that almost 90% of affiliate applications are fraudulent in one or more ways. Personally speaking, our network does not accept any applications without 100% accurate information. This includes false addresses, phone numbers which are disconnected or not yours, PO Box addresses, etc.

The most common thing that we see, which we instantly deny are people signing up for others. It’s extremely obvious and highly inappropriate. We are very aware of the fraud rings that are running around from affiliate network to affiliate network. There’s usually one person taking on multiple accounts with a bunch of different networks that they believe they can get into easily, and then they commit fraud in order to get leads/sales, promising you a percentage of the cut, whereas all you have to do is deal with getting approved and speaking to your affiliate manager.

This aforementioned fraudulent activity is a huge issue running wild around the affiliate marketing industry. You may be wondering, why is this such a problem? I’ll outline several reasons why:

1) The most direct problem with having somebody fraudulently attain leads for you is that as soon as the affiliate network catches it, which speaking personally, is extremely quickly, your account will be terminated, and you will NOT be paid for these commissions. You may ask why you wont be paid. The reason is because advertisers do not pay for fraudulent leads, and therefore holds the affiliate network responsible for this. The affiliate network’s relationship is often tarnished by fraudulent activity, so you can bet that your relationship with the affiliate network will immediately be revoked.

2) All reputable affiliate networks require your social security number and lots of other personal information. If somebody is committing fraud under your name and SSN, YOU are personally liable for this. Fraud is a crime, and can be prosecuted in court. Most affiliate networks have legal teams and will file a lawsuit if their reputation has been damaged, or if they lost out on money due to the fraudulent activity. It’s simply not worth it.

3) After looking at number 2, and realizing that you’re working with a person who is committing fraud, you should also realize that you gave this person access to your SSN and other personal information, which gives them the ability to not only tarnish your reputation, and bring forward potential legal liabilities against yourself, but this person can also steal your identity or commit other frauds using your information.

There are many other reasons that this is an extremely bad idea. I welcome others to bring mention to them!

The reason I am making this post is to warn a large population of ‘affiliates’ of the reality of what they may be doing, or may consider doing. It’s not safe for you or your reputation to take part in any of these fraudulent activities, even if you’re not the one physically attaining these fraudulent leads/sales. There are many thousands of brilliant affiliate marketers and are extremely successful through legal, and globally accepted means of marketing. There’s never a reason to move over to the gray area/black hat “world” of marketing. As soon as you do, you will simply have to worry about the above mention problems with this type of fraudulent activity.

To summarize this in one sentence, you should be extremely cautious with your personal information, and should never allow anybody to commit illegal activity with you being the face on that activity.

(Should never commit any illegal activity at all anyway).

I hope this was an eye opener for at least some people, and it is a great hope of mine to see the quality affiliates come out and stand out above the huge population of fraudsters.

Article posted in "Affiliate Marketing" |

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2 Comments

“This includes false addresses, phone numbers which are disconnected or not yours, PO Box addresses, etc.”

So PO Box addresses mean fraud? I guess people like me would be SOL if all the networks took that attitude since I don’t have any other address I could give you unless I just made one up. Are you aware of the level of ID required to get a PO Box? They aren’t sold to the highest bidder y’know. My credit cards allow it as a billing address but your special network considers its use an indicator of fraud. How novel.

I understand that you have a need to screen affiliates, but I can think of lots of ways besides the use of a PO Box.

DominoLady on July 31, 2010

Hello DominoLady,

PO Box Addresses are simply flagged in our system. For a quality affiliate, we do not deny their account. However, more often than not, we do deny these accounts because from our screening experience, 99/100 times these are fraudulent accounts. It’s nothing personal against you or others who may use PO boxes. I understand they require ID and payments, but most companies and affiliates have physical addresses, and we prefer to deal with those (especially when mailing checks). This is nothing specific to CPATrend, as many other networks also flag PO Box addresses, simply ask around and you’ll see that.

admin on August 6, 2010