In this day and digital age, it has become more important to verify the the genuine, legitimate nature of a prospective client’s identity and their respective intentions.   You always need to be one-step ahead, as usual, and always wise to back-handed identification methods.  The application process for an affiliate is, of course, the first point of entry for any sort of fraudulent access to occur.  Likewise, your affiliate screening process has to be meticulous to maintain your data’s, and company’s, integrity.

Although most prospective publishers you run into are genuine, there are still a few web-rings of spammers that thrive off of fraudulent revenue.

Here are some of my tips to keep these dregs out:

- Cross reference IP addresses with physical addresses, and if there is a discrepancy, ask them where they are signing up from.  If this smells fishy…it probably is.
- Check out their website and make sure it doesn’t look like a generic template placeholder - these are frequently used to make it look like they are inquiring from an ‘established’ company.
- Check out their privacy policy for the ‘real factor’.
- Google their physical address.  Chances are it’s a red-flag if Pizza Hut comes up.
- Google the company name.  You can find all sorts of reputation info and find out if they actually exist here.
- Look at their ‘Contact’ page.  If this seems off, again, it probably is worth a hint of skepticism.
- Call the supplied phone number.  If this doesn’t work, don’t do business with them.  The phone call is one of the best ways to really see if all of the pieces of their application connect, so use this methodically.
- Read up on “Public Proxy Servers”.  There are many ways to spoof IP addresses and trick the applicant reviewer into tracing a valid location.  There are ways around this!

In our industry, it simply takes a few extra steps to ensure that the integrity of your company’s data remains strong. By using these few key principles and procedures to digitally identify your prospective affiliate, your data will remain untainted.

As always, you can contact me with any questions you have regarding the security of your own network!

This entry was posted on Monday, July 28th, 2008 at 4:39 pm and is filed under Josh's Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.