BTC Affiliate Pro: How the Fraud Detection System Works

Affiliate fraud is a real problem. Affiliates may attempt to generate artificial commissions by placing orders themselves using their own referral code (self-referral), by generating fake clicks, or by coordinating with others to create fraudulent referrals.

BTC Affiliate Pro includes a fraud scoring system that evaluates every referral before recording it. Understanding how it works helps you configure it appropriately for your business.

The fraud score: 0 to 100

Every referral receives a fraud score from 0 to 100. Higher scores indicate higher fraud suspicion. Referrals with scores above 80 are automatically flagged as fraud and not recorded.

The score is calculated from multiple signals:

*IP velocity* — If more than 3 referrals from the same IP address are recorded within 24 hours, 30 points are added. More than 10 referrals from the same IP adds another 30 points (60 total for this signal). This catches someone manually clicking their own referral link repeatedly.

*Affiliate velocity* — If an affiliate generates more than 5 referrals within a single hour, 20 points are added. Legitimate affiliate traffic rarely converts at this rate.

*Duplicate order* — If the same order ID is attributed to any affiliate more than once, 50 points are added. This catches double-submission attempts.

*No referrer* — If a referral arrives without an HTTP referrer (suggesting the referral link was typed directly rather than clicked from a real source), 10 points are added. This is a weak signal alone but contributes to higher scores in combination.

Self-referral prevention

Before any fraud scoring, the system checks whether the customer placing the order is the same WordPress user as the affiliate. If they are, the referral is rejected entirely and the event is logged as a fraud flag.

Auto-approve threshold

In settings, you can configure an auto-approve threshold. Referrals with fraud scores below this threshold (and above 0) are approved automatically without requiring manual review. A threshold of 30 is conservative; 50 is more permissive.

Referrals above the threshold require manual review in WP Admin → BTC Affiliates → Referrals → Pending.