How Fraud Protection Works
Every click and conversion is checked against a set of fraud rules as it arrives. Each rule that matches adds points, giving a fraud score from 0 (looks clean) to 100 (very likely fraud). Your settings decide what happens at each score:
| Score | Result |
|---|---|
| Below the suspicious score | Allowed — paid as normal. |
| Suspicious score and above | Suspicious — still allowed, but marked in your reports. |
| Action score and above | Acted on — handled by the action you choose. |
The fraud engine is built in and included with your account. Set it up in Settings → Platform Settings → Anti-Fraud → Fraud Protection.
Fraud Protection, Fraud Logs and third-party fraud tools are available on plans that include Fraud Detection. Global Fallback works on every plan.
Choosing a Protection Level
Until you pick a level, nothing is blocked. Most networks start with Balanced.
| Level | What it does | Suspicious from | Action from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lenient | Nothing is blocked. Suspicious traffic is marked in reports. Good while you learn what your traffic looks like. | 30 | 90 (mark only) |
| Balanced(recommended) | Clear fraud is blocked. Borderline traffic is allowed and marked. | 20 | 75 |
| Strict | Anything fairly suspicious is blocked. For high-risk offers. Some real traffic will be blocked too. | 15 | 50 |
Prefer your own numbers? Click Set my own numbers and enter a suspicious score and an action score. The action score must be higher than the suspicious score.
What Happens to Flagged Traffic
Choose what happens to anything at or above the action score:
| Action | Effect |
|---|---|
| Mark suspicious only | Nothing is stopped. Traffic is only marked in reports. |
| Block | The click is stopped. The fallback is never used. |
| Reject | The click is refused, and the visitor goes to your fallback if you have one. |
| Send to the fallback | The visitor is redirected to your fallback. For conversions, this holds them for your review. |
Payment Hold
Some fraud is only discovered later. If you resell offers from another network, they may reject conversions weeks after you have paid your affiliate. A payment hold waits before an approved conversion becomes payable, so a late rejection costs you nothing.
- Hold Period — the number of days to wait. 14–30 days usually matches upstream networks. 0 pays straight away.
- Only hold suspicious conversions — when on, clean conversions are paid on time and only suspicious ones wait. When off, everything waits.
Blocked & Trusted IPs
These lists are checked before any rule runs. Enter one IP address or range per line, for example 203.0.113.7 or 203.0.113.0/24.
- Blocked — always rejected, straight away.
- Trusted — skip the IP checks (VPN, data centre, click limits). Add your office and your advertisers' test IPs so your own testing isn't flagged.
Rules and Limits
Under Advanced you can see every detection rule, grouped by what it checks: Clicks, Conversions and Affiliates (for example, one person running several accounts). Each rule has its own switch, and the ? icon explains what it catches. Switch a rule off only if it keeps catching traffic you know is good.
Limits are the numbers some rules use, such as how many clicks per hour one IP may send. Leave a box empty to use the recommended value shown in grey, or enter 0 to switch that limit off. Running high-volume email or survey offers? Raise the hourly limits. Low-volume, high-value leads? Lower them.
Global Fallback
A fallback is where a visitor goes when a campaign can't accept them. Sending them to another offer means you still earn instead of showing an error. Set it in Settings → Platform Settings → Anti-Fraud → Global Fallback.
Network Fallback
Used when a campaign can't take a visitor and has no fallback of its own. Switch it on, enter the web address to send visitors to (macros such as {click_id} work), and choose when to use it:
- A cap is reached
- The visitor doesn't match targeting (country, device, OS or browser)
- The campaign is paused or ended
- The affiliate isn't approved for the campaign
- Fraud is found (only when the fraud action is Reject or Send to the fallback)
- Something goes wrong while handling the click
Tick none to use it in all of these cases. With the fallback off, visitors see a plain "offer unavailable" page.
Repeat Visitor Page
Where to send someone who clicks the same campaign again. It is used by campaigns set to send repeat visitors somewhere else that don't have a page of their own. It works even when the network fallback is off. Leave it blank to send repeat visitors to the offer.
AffClix tries the campaign's own fallback first, then the network fallback, then the "offer unavailable" page. If a campaign's fallback names both another campaign and a URL, the campaign is used. The URL is only used if that campaign can't take the visitor either.
Per-Campaign Settings
Each campaign has an Anti Fraud tab with four sections:
| Section | What it does |
|---|---|
| Click Protection | Stops bursts of clicks, rapid repeats from one IP and proxy conversions before they cost you. |
| Repeat Visitors | Decides who counts as the same visitor (by IP and device, or by cookie) and for how long, and whether a repeat click goes to the offer, somewhere else, or is blocked. |
| Fallback | This campaign's own fallback: another campaign or a URL, and when to use it. |
| Fraud Score Rules | Leave this on your network settings unless one offer needs different rules. |
Test clicks from the Link Tester are never treated as repeat visitors.
Third-Party Fraud Tools
If your network has a contract with an outside fraud service, such as Anura, IPQualityScore, FraudScore or 24metrics, connect it under Settings → Platform Settings → Anti-Fraud → 3rd Party Integration. This option only appears once a provider is available for your account.
Monitoring Results
- Fraud Logs — your invalid traffic rate, the signals that fired, and which affiliates are sending it.
- Capping Logs — to tell traffic stopped by a cap apart from traffic stopped by fraud rules.
- Daily Report — to compare approved and total clicks per affiliate.