Q: How do I run a fraud audit on my existing program?

Q: How do I run a fraud audit on my existing program?

Block a quiet afternoon and pull your last 90 days. Work top-down:

— Sort affiliates by conversion rate. Anyone converting at 3x the program average gets flagged for review, not a payout.
— Check time-to-conversion. Clicks converting in under 10 seconds are cookie stuffing or direct linking, not real referrals.
— Group conversions by IP and device fingerprint. Repeat buyers from one source under different customer accounts is self-referral.
— Match refund and chargeback rates per affiliate. A partner with clean traffic refunds like your baseline; a fraudster's cohort spikes.
— Review coupon and brand-bidding partners separately. They often intercept sales you'd have made anyway.

For each flagged account, pause payouts and ask for traffic-source detail before reversing anything.

The caveat: high conversion rate alone isn't proof. Some partners are just good. Use it as a trigger to look closer, never as an automatic ban, or you'll lose your best people to a false positive.

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