I’ve been accused of fraud! What do I do?

4 February 2019
10
0
Reading: 3 min

I’ve been accused of fraud! What do I do?

Hello.

Today we’ve prepared a small article that could actually prove to be very useful. Even if you’ve never been called a fraud or accused of bad traffic quality, spend 5 minutes and read this regardless. Unfortunately, situations like this happen in affiliate marketing much too often. So, let’s figure it out: what should you do if your affiliate network is accusing you of fraud.

P.S. If you’ve ever experienced something like this — let us know in the comments. How did you handle the situation? Did you manage to get your money? What did the process look like? Let’s help each other become better!

In our field of work, it’s not uncommon for dishonest people to try and trick advertisers, giving them fake leads (be it requests, app downloads or casino deposits). Such actions are called fraud — the action of cheating, lying, or deceiving someone. Often this negatively impacts the entire process, with the exception of the villain himself (the partnership program and the advertiser lose profit, wading through fake leads and trying to find the fraud).

Currently, both the PP and the advertisers utilize smart anti-fraud systems, scanning suspicious activity. The expenses directed towards updating such system are justified — these days pulling off a fraudulent operation without special technology and unusual methods are practically impossible. Anti-fraud tries to be one step ahead of the fraudster, so the scripts are developed specifically to single out and prevent fake leads.

Sometimes it’s possible that an entirely honest affiliate gets accused of fraud anyway, and their finances get frozen “until we figure out what’s going on”. It’s an unpleasant situation, but things like this happen. Whether to blame the advertiser or the PP doesn’t matter, what’s important is that you hold your own and get your money. What should you do if this happens to you?

  1. Remember — the truth is on your side! For your money you need to fight till the end, so don’t be shy and keep asking your manager about the progress, demanding your money;
  2. Get a spending statistic from advertising cabinets. It’s possible you’ll need this information to prove you’re in the right. Presumption of innocence hardly works online, so this has to be done;
  3. Check reviews of the affiliate network with which the whole thing took place. Maybe this isn’t the first case of an affiliate having to handle a situation like this, and you’ve found a bad partnership program. In this case, you’re in for a long and unpleasant process, which won’t always bring satisfying results;
  4. If you work with other affiliate networks, ask your managers to write you a good review. This will speed up the process and make you look more trustworthy;
  5. When you start getting ignored — go public. Even if you can’t get your money in the end, it’ll help other webmasters avoid a situation like this.

Accusations of fraud can happen both to beginners and trusted partners. In any case — if you have nothing to hide, fight for your truth till the end. Tell us if you’ve ever experienced accusations of fraud!

Have a story to tell about traffic arbitrage?
Become a ZorbasMedia contributor!
Become an author