I have been getting a lot of fraudulent affiliate applications lately for the affiliate program from PO Boxes in Europe and was wondering what other affiliate managers do to help curb this problem?

For our affiliate program we confirm the user's email address before allowing them to sign up.

We also do not allow them to change their payment address without speaking with them on the phone first.

Many fraudulent affiliates will sign up with one address and phone number (like a US address) and then change it later to an overseas address to get their payments. Many times, these affiliates are involved in spam, etc.

In the past, we have had to deal with fraudulent applications like all affiliate managers.

Over the past week, however, we have had one of our domains used by an individual to attempt to circumvent registration safeguards.

It appears that the individual picked the domain because of its traffic (publicly available through Alexa, Ranking.com, etc) and it's probability of being accepted by most affiliate networks and programs.

Next, it appears that they looked up the whois information and used this information in an attempt to apply to the programs. They simply changed the contact name and left everything else the same (phone, email address).

For those programs that review applications we received email to the domain and then informed the program of the fraudulent applications. In some cases, the programs knew us personally and contacted us when they saw that someone was trying to use one of our domains.

Sadly, however, many independent programs automatically accepted the individual and did not send a confirmation email. Already, we are having bounced spam email coming back to the domain because the individual is using the domain name in the reply address of the spam they send promoting the programs that automatically accepted them. It is a considerable amount of work to get the original email, determine the affiliate program, contact the program, etc. In some cases, the individual had already begun changing the original profile (mainly payment through a paypal address).

The person attempted to use an invalid email address within our domain, but luckily we have all invalid emails delivered and thus became aware of his activities. However, for programs that allow the user to pick their own username and password, the individual could easily log in later even though the person never got the confirmation email.

Further, the person could have easily used another email address as well. I wonder how many programs compare the email address's domain to the domain of the web site being registered?

What percentage of applications are fradulent?

I have had the same issue with per lead programs. Since then I have concentrated on using only per sale programs which cuts down on the number of fraudulent leads.

You might want to http://www.marketingtips.com/assoctrac/t.x/836969 try AssocTRAC 4.0. It is a complete affiliate management solution that enables online businesses of any size to easily start and run their own affiliate program.

http://www.marketingtips.com/assoctrac/t.x/836969 AssocTRAC is easily integrated with most ordering systems and shopping carts, and is the exact same system we here at the Internet Marketing Center use to manage our own affiliate program, meaning that users of AssocTRAC 4.0 are getting one of the most advanced, reliable, and up-to-date affiliate management programs on the market.

You can test it risk-free for 90 days.

hey guys, sorry to take up so much space with my pic. I have been trying without success to get it smaller. Any idea?

Do you have a photo program like paintshop or photoshop? You can open it in one of those programs and adjust the size and resave it and upload it here again.

Hello guys! Hope you won't mind if I join in the discussion. It's just that I have experienced an excat happening with what our Staff here experienced.

I was lookig over some affiliate applications to one of our programs last time when I found one application who listed one of our owned sites as his. That was terrible!

Thanks LisaM. I think I will your suggestion