What is affiliate fraud?
Affiliate fraud is when an affiliate network, or a sub-publisher inside it, fakes or misrepresents installs and in-app events to earn payouts. It is a subset of attribution fraud that is specific to traffic bought through affiliates and their sub-sources.
Why affiliates carry more risk
- Paid per outcome: cost per install or per event pricing rewards volume.
- Layers of resale: a network may buy from many sub-publishers you never see directly.
- No self-attribution: unlike Meta or Google, affiliates rely entirely on your attribution platform's credit, which makes stealing that credit worthwhile.
Common types
- Click spamming: mass clicks to catch organic and other installs in the attribution window.
- Click injection: a click fired just as an Android install begins.
- Bots and server traffic: clicks from cloud IPs or automated devices. See data-centre traffic.
- Undisclosed incentivised traffic: rewarded users sold as normal performance traffic.
- Fake in-app events: forged sign-ups or purchases on event-based payouts.
Signals to look for
- Very high click volume with a tiny click-to-install rate.
- A cluster of installs opening seconds after the click.
- Many installs from the same IP or device model.
- Strong install numbers with near-zero retention or revenue.
- Volume concentrated in a few sub-publishers.
How to stop paying for it
- Tag first, then read flagged volume by affiliate and sub-publisher.
- Withhold postbacks for the rules you trust, so the affiliate is not credited. See rejection postback.
- Use the partner's rejection route where one exists.
- Dispute with evidence under your contract. Credit terms depend on your agreement.
How Linkrunner does this
Fraud Control lets you tag or tag and withhold postbacks per rule, and an affiliate with a rejection URL receives a one-time call with reason codes instead of its normal postback. Setup is in the affiliate partner docs. For tools that compare on this, see the best mobile ad fraud prevention tools.