What is Affiliate fraud?

Common forms include bots and click farms, fake or recycled leads, cookie stuffing, install farms on mobile offers, sending incentivized traffic to offers that forbid it, brand bidding and buying with stolen cards, which later return as chargebacks.

Networks fight it with fraud scoring, IP and device checks, a hold period before conversions become payable and manual review of unusual patterns. Confirmed fraud usually means rejected conversions, a reversed balance and a closed account, sometimes across the whole network.

Honest affiliates can be hit too, when they buy traffic from a source that mixes in bots. Watch conversion rates that look too good, use reputable traffic sources and tell your affiliate manager early if numbers look strange.