Best practices: preventing referral fraud without blocking real customers
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, then judge on evidence
Section titled “Let detection do the watching, then judge on evidence”Instead of auditing every referred order, let Bloop watch for the patterns abuse leaves behind (self-referral email matches, repeated IPs, high volume in a week) and surface only the orders that deserve a second look. Keep these signals on: they’re your cheapest line of defence. A flag is a prompt to look, not a verdict: a power user on a shared office network can look a lot like collusion. For a genuine referrer who keeps tripping a signal for innocent reasons, use Exclude suspicious referral detection on their profile. Ban only clear abusers, and judge each held case on its own evidence rather than rejecting automatically. See the Fraud center for the full signal breakdown and how to review a case.
All of these live in Fraud center → Detection rules, in two groups:
- Fraud detection flags a referral for review. Every signal is on by default: self-referral by email, by matching last name, or by matching address, several referred purchases from the same IP, and an unusual number of referred purchases in a short period. The last-name signal is deliberately cautious: short surnames must match exactly to be flagged, and longer ones are flagged when nearly identical, so common short surnames do not flag honest friends.
- Fraud Prevention blocks the referee discount outright when the referrer and referee share an IP address or a browser. Both checks are off by default. Turn them on only if you see abuse, since a household or an office network can share an IP.
A referee whose email matches the referrer’s, including Gmail variations of the same address, is rejected straight away rather than held, as long as the self-referral email signal is on.
Remove the incentive to cheat at the source
Section titled “Remove the incentive to cheat at the source”The cheapest fraud to prevent is the kind your offer never invited. Bloop already closes the most common loopholes: an existing customer who checks out with a referrer’s code is not rewarded as a new referee, and a referral whose order is cancelled, or 90% or more refunded, is revoked according to your Order Settings. Several offer-level choices quietly reduce abuse further:
- 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. It is a store-wide setting in Referral → Settings → Reward review period. 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
Section titled “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
Section titled “Set it up in Bloop”
- Review and resolve flagged orders in the Fraud center.
- Add minimum requirements in Set up referrer and referee rewards, and set the store-wide review period in Reward Timing & Revocation.
- 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.