Safeguards and risk
Referral safeguards on every plan, and hourly fraud monitoring on Scale.
Two layers stop bad referrals from turning into paid commissions:
- Safeguards are rules that stop a bad referral before it counts. They run on every plan.
- Fraud monitoring looks back over your traffic every hour for patterns worth a look. It's on the Scale plan and above.
Both work the same way. Nothing is refused or paid out behind your back, and anything held shows you why.
Safeguards
Open Settings, Safeguards. A change takes effect on the next click or signup. It never touches commissions already earned.
- Block self-referrals (on by default). A self-referral is a partner buying through their own link. A checkout in the partner's own email earns nothing and raises a flag for you. A click from the device they use for the portal isn't tracked.
- Require a business email. Applications from free mailboxes wait in your queue, with the reason shown. Nobody is refused without you.
- Hide customer identity from partners. Partners still see each referral's amount and date.
- Partners can submit leads manually. It's off by default. When it's on, submitted leads show on your Leads page for you to decide. Approved leads go through your commission rules like any sale.
There are also three lists:
- Blocked countries: clicks from them aren't tracked and earn nothing. A visitor whose country can't be worked out is never blocked.
- Blocked traffic sources: domains, or the categories paid search, coupon sites, social media and cashback. A visit referred from a match isn't tracked.
- Blocked keywords: an application whose name or answers mention one waits in your queue, with the word shown.
Held applications sit in the review queue, where you can see the rule that held each one. The applicant is never told which rule it was, so nobody can test the lists to find out what's on them.
Fraud monitoring
Risk runs seven checks every hour over your live traffic, on Scale and above:
| Signal | What it looks for |
|---|---|
| Conversion burst | Implausibly many conversions in an hour |
| Same IP across partners | Several partners converting from one address |
| Disposable email | Customers on throwaway mail domains |
| High refund rate | A partner whose sales keep coming back |
| Possible self-referral | Aliased addresses that match the partner |
| Click and card countries differ | Geography that doesn't add up |
| Coupon abuse | A code converting far from its partner's traffic |
Each hit becomes a flag. It shows how serious it is, the evidence, and the partner and customer involved.
A flag means a pattern looks unusual. You decide whether anything is wrong: review it, resolve it or dismiss it. Nothing is acted on automatically.
Open Reports, Risk to see them. The page opens with the high-severity flags that are still open, oldest first. Each one shows:
- a line of evidence
- whether review has started
- a link to the full flag
Run checks now leads the page only when nothing is waiting. With flags open, it moves under the list. The checks run every hour anyway.
To tune the thresholds, or switch off single checks, use the risk panel under Settings, Safeguards.
Every new flag also sends a webhook event, so you can route flags into your own alerts.