Unfortunately, we work in an industry in which dishonesty abounds. I don't believe that this is an inherently immoral industry and therefore breeds bad business ethics, but rather, this is an industry in which it is very easy to make a quick buck by cheating for traffic, or cheating sponsors. At $30 per signup, a person could live fairly comfortably with just four fraudulent signups per day. Beer for a party could be bought with just a few signups. And unfortunately, our industry has a long way to go before these people can be stopped in their tracks.

Granted, things have gotten much more difficult for them, and their methods have had to adapt. Years ago, cheaters would spam AOL emails and chat rooms for clicks/signups using programs that would hijack other people's accounts. Hit bots were used to cheat the many per click programs (in fact, per click programs received the worst abuse). Stolen credit card lists were traded and used to simulate real signups.

Now, as most programs are either revshare or PPS, PPS is generally the target of choice for cheating webmasters. PPS programs are forced to become more and more creative with their fraud prevention techniques. They must be quick to make decisions about questionable accounts that look suspicious. More and more, they seek mostly traffic from established webmasters with whom they have already developed relationships.

So what are some ways we can fight fraud and cheating? The first is, as I mentioned, doing business primarily with people you know. If you're trading traffic, trade with established sites that you feel are relatively safe. If you're looking for webmasters to promote your affiliate program, seek out primarily established webmasters with good reputations, or webmasters you've done business with in the past. If a webmaster is unknown, seek some extra data from the person.

One possibility is to share fraud/cheater data with other webmasters/programs. Develop a circle of friends, and when someone cheats you, share that person's information with the circle. If the webmaster runs out of programs to promote, or sites to trade with, then it's no longer worthwhile to take the risks. Cheating is then reduced across the board. Some have suggested starting an organization devoted to sharing information of this type, but for many reasons, this is the wrong route... primarily because it would be too vulnerable to misinformation and personal grudges. But there's nothing wrong with privately sharing information.

Also, programmers are going to have to put more focus into developing software with cheater prevention in mind. If a company is going to buy your affiliate program software, they MUST know that tools are in place to catch cheaters - and the more sophisticated these tools are, the better. If you're selling some traffic trading software, then the customers must know that tools are in place to catch cheaters who are siphoning free traffic.

Reducing the amount of cheating benefits us all. Without cheaters, profits could be higher. Payouts could be higher. Man power could be reduced. Headaches and stress could be relieved. We simply can't afford to just let them slip by, and keep handing them our traffic and our money.

DISCUSS THIS AT JBM