I could do an article on Merchant Fraudsters also and I will do one day, but today it’s a short article about Affiliate Fraudsters. I will write a few more posts on this subject as time goes on but for just now I will ask some questions that I already know the answer for.

• Why is it that most Affiliate Fraudsters either use free space or pretend legitimate Affiliate websites belong to them?
• Why is it that most Affiliate Fraudsters use a free email account such as one from hotmail, yahoo or gmail?
• Why is it that many Affiliate Fraudsters have English sounding names and address in UK, USA or Canada yet are actually not from these countries?
• Why is it, that they target leads based programs more heavily than sales based programs?

I know lots of “whys” and no answers. The reason I didn’t post the answers is that they are easy to work out. However what is not easy to work out is how can you reduce the risk from Affiliate Fraud to ensure good honest Affiliates are being paid while the fraud ones are being booted from Networks?

I have yet to see a fail safe system that allows for open, free and easy access to the Networks and Merchants for honest Affiliates but that will keep the bad Affiliates out. To say everyone with free space is up to no good is also not very fair, but is it unreasonable to ask Affiliates to invest in at the bare minimum….. a domain name? I don’t think so.

I believe that while it’s only a very tiny percentage of such Affiliates that try to fraud a Merchant or a Network, it is the honest ones that end up paying the price with reduced commissions to counter balance lost revenue and so on.

Time for everyone to tackle the problems these people bring head on, if you see someone up to no good report it to the Networks and Merchants involved.