Determining what referred purchases are acceptable or fraudulent often depends on your store's policies and how you run your referral program. ReferralCandy's fraud detection and prevention measures make it easy to review and act on suspicious and fraudulent referrals.
What is considered fraud?
What is considered fraud varies by merchant, but there is a general consensus on what is acceptable and unacceptable in referral programs. ReferralCandy detects the following as suspicious referrals:
Self-referrals
Multiple referred purchases made using the same IP address
Similar names or email addresses between the advocate and the referred friend
High volume of referred purchases made within a week
Some merchants have no issue with customers posting links or coupons on forums or coupon sites. We recommend using this article as a guide to outline a Terms and Conditions agreement for your referral program that reflects what your team considers acceptable and unacceptable.
How to check for fraud?
On the ReferralCandy home page, the Suspicious customers card notifies you if there are suspicious referrals that need your attention.
Click Review customers and take note of the deadlines. If this lapses before you take action, the advocate will get rewarded. Once rewarded, you can't disqualify or void the referred purchase if it is later determined to be fraudulent.
Weekly suspicious activity reports are sent to your admin email address.
Periodically monitor the Top advocates card (Non-Shopify) at the bottom of the home page. This card ranks the advocates who have the highest total referrals within the date range you set.
Spot-check the list for advocates with a noticeably high amount of referrals that need further review.
If an advocate on the list stands out, it might be worth checking if they are an influencer who shares their referral link with their audience.
Note: The system extends the review period to 14 days for purchases flagged as suspicious. If your review period is longer than 14 days, it remains unchanged for suspicious referrals.
Fraud Center
Fraud Center is where you manage suspicious customers detected by the system and view your account's fraud history.
To review and manage suspicious purchases, go to your Fraud Center page:
From the ReferralCandy dashboard, go to My Store > Fraud Center.
From your Shopify admin, go to Fraud Center.
On the Fraud Center page, you’ll see a list of the suspicious referral activities detected by the system.
Click each entry to review. Here you can view the customer's profile, their referral history, and the reason why the system detected them as suspicious.
Use the information on the page to decide what action you should take.
For Self-referrals, you can do the following:
Disqualify or delete the referred purchase
Ban the advocate
Do nothing, and the advocate is rewarded when the review period lapses
For other types of suspicious referrals, you have three (3) options to choose from in the Is the advocate's referral activity fraudulent? box:
Yes, it’s fraud - Provides options to ban the advocate, and disqualify or delete the referred purchase.
Note: Deleting or disqualifying referrals makes the purchases non-rewardable and not commission-chargeable. Learn more
It’s not fraud - Provides an option to mark the advocate as trusted. Trusted advocates are excluded from suspicious referral detection.
I’m not sure - Lets you contact customer support.
Do nothing, and the advocate is rewarded when the review period lapses
Note: Banning a contact is irreversible. Once an advocate is banned, they won't be able to refer friends and their pending rewards are disqualified. Learn more
Fraud-handling best practices
There are instances where the system won't detect or trace where a referral link or coupon code was posted or leaked. If you’re unsure how to take action on referrals, you can try the following:
Use a search engine like Google to search for the advocate’s unique referral link or friend offer code.
Reach out to the advocate via email. They might be an influencer or blogger who shares their referral link with their audience.
Contact us for further investigation of suspicious referred purchases and the contacts involved.
Notes:
Many websites do not index their content in a way that allows the system to scan or search for referral link and coupon leaks. The primary goal for fraud management is to mitigate as much fraud as possible.
The Fraud Center actively looks for specific, known suspicious behaviors, but may not be able to detect other forms of fraudulent behavior.
Fraud Center FAQ
What happens if I ignore suspicious referrals in Fraud Center?
What happens if I ignore suspicious referrals in Fraud Center?
If you don't take action, referred purchases that were tagged as suspicious will be considered legitimate, and the advocate gets rewarded when the review period is over.
Why can't I see the "Is the advocate's referral activity fraudulent?" box?
Why can't I see the "Is the advocate's referral activity fraudulent?" box?
If you don't see the Is the advocate's referral activity fraudulent? box and its options, it means that the suspicious referred purchase is identified as a self-referral.
My customer's order is not a fraudulent order. How can I ensure that they will receive their reward?
My customer's order is not a fraudulent order. How can I ensure that they will receive their reward?
The Fraud Center sends alerts only for identified suspicious referrals, but ReferralCandy does not take action on those purchases. If you determine that a purchase is legitimate, you can ignore the fraud alert. The advocate will be rewarded as usual after the review period ends, provided that the purchase meets the reward conditions.
If you want to prevent ReferralCandy from tagging a customer's referrals as suspicious in the future, select the It's not fraud option to mark the advocate as a trusted contact. Note that this option is not available for self-referrals.
💬 Need help? Click the chat widget on the right to start a conversation. Learn more