Preventing Fraud
Every reward you pay is only worth it if a real new customer is on the other end. The short answer: leave Bloop's automatic fraud signals on so abuse is caught before a reward leaves your account, but review each held case on its evidence rather than rejecting on sight — and use your offer settings to remove the incentive to cheat in the first place. This article explains how to treat fraud control as a budget control, then links the Bloop settings involved.
The most common abuse is self-referral: one person posing as both referrer and referee to claim both sides of the deal. Heavy-handed blocking stops that but also frustrates genuine power users; the goal is to catch the few abusers without taxing the many honest customers.
Let detection do the watching
Instead of auditing every referred order, let Bloop watch for the patterns abuse leaves behind and surface only the orders that deserve a second look. When a referred purchase trips a signal, Bloop flags it, holds the reward, and opens a case for your decision. Genuine referrals flow through untouched.
Self-referral email
Referrer and referee emails that look like the same person after normalizing aliases
Repeated same IP
Several referred purchases for one referrer from the same IP in a recent window
High volume in a week
One referrer driving an unusually high number of referred purchases in a short window
Keep these on. They are your first and cheapest line of defence.
Review held cases on evidence, not suspicion
A flag is a prompt to look, not a verdict. A power user on a shared office or household network can look a lot like collusion. When reviewing the Fraud center queue:
Trust genuine referrers who keep tripping a signal for innocent reasons, so future orders from them flow through.
Ban only clear abusers.
Judge the held order on its own evidence rather than rejecting any flagged order automatically.
Remove the incentive to cheat at the source
The cheapest fraud to prevent is the kind your offer never invited. Several offer-level choices quietly reduce abuse:
A minimum purchase requirement makes self-referral unprofitable, because the abuser has to spend real money to claim a reward worth less.
A reward review period adds a short delay before approval, giving signals time to surface before money moves. Suspicious orders are held separately regardless.
A tighter audience — for example restricting referring to prior buyers or a customer tag — narrows the pool of people who can game the program. Open wide at launch to gather data, then tighten only if abuse appears.
Match scrutiny to risk
Not every program needs the same vigilance. A high-value cash reward on a wide-open audience deserves close review; a modest store-credit reward gated to past customers carries far less risk and rarely needs hands-on attention. Calibrate your review effort to what a successful abuse would actually cost you.
Set it up in Bloop
Review and resolve flagged orders in the Fraud center.
Add minimums and a review period in Set up referrer and referee rewards.
Tighten who can refer in Target audience.
To understand the patterns behind the flags, read how to prevent referral fraud and what self-referral is.
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