Frauder. The very word conjures mental images of a shady person hunched over a computer, snickering to themselves as they maliciously cheat honest people out of their money. Surprisingly, most frauders aren’t this kind of person…they are a normal person who looks just like you and me. It can be a housewife, a college student, or a teenager. Most of the time, they are not even aware that they are committing fraud.

By reading the Terms of Service on every site, and by taking this article to heart, you can avoid committing fraud, and thereby losing your account on many GetPaidTo websites. If you are new to the GetPaidTo industry, this article is ESPECIALLY meant for you.

The very first rule of all: no proxy usage. A proxy is a program of sorts that reroutes your normal IP address through a “dummy” one…thereby concealing your true IP. Sites track who has completed what offer by IPs, so if you use a proxy, it is usually viewed as an attempt to cheat. By using a proxy, a person can repeatedly do an offer, frauding the site and the advertiser out of their money. Due to this rule, it is best to not use any AOL or Netscape browsers on GetPaidTo sites, as these services now automatically route every user through a proxy.

Segueing from the previous rule…don’t ever repeat offers on any site. Once you complete an offer, you may not do it anywhere else, ever again. For example, if you complete an offer called MID - Hollywood Clorox Wipes on DealBarbiePays, if it credits, you may not complete it again on any other site.

Advertisers only want brand new leads, not old ones. They actually keep a very close eye on multiple completions of offers by a single user. Many affiliates share their information using a system called DirectTrack. They mark down in their database when a person completes a different offer. Every time that offer is completed, they run the information used to complete it through their database. If they find a match, they immediately flag it, and investigate.  Sometimes, if they catch multiple instances of duplicate completions by a user, they will completely “ban” the user from their system. Anything that user completes, will never, ever receive credit. They also have been known to contact the sites themselves, requesting that the user be removed, or face the probability that their affiliate account will be revoked.

Another rule is one account per household. Yes, this means that if you sign up, your spouse cannot join the same site as well. Neither can your Aunt Myrtle who is staying at your house, even though you’ve asked her to leave many times and she does not seem to get the hint. Oh, and your dog can’t either. Sorry.

This is to prevent people who try to circumvent the site by repeating offers by using multiple accounts. Using one account, they complete a set of offers, and then request their money. Using another account, they complete said offers AGAIN, and request their money again.  This gives the affiliates and advertisers false leads…and leads to lots of trouble.

On to the next rule!

Disposable/temporary emails…a tempting solution to the problem of spam. Websites with names such as Mailinator, Dodgeit, SpamGourmet, and more, promote their lucrative email services. Get an email address from one of these sites, and within a week the email address will be permanently deleted, leaving your own inbox pristine and spam-free. However, affiliates are not paying for leads to emails that do not exist. Therefore, it is a waste of their money if they suddenly find that the lead they paid for is invalid. To avoid getting banned for this violation, use normal email services, like Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail. I myself have several different email accounts I use for offer signups. My own, personal email, is never used on anything.

One of the biggest problems currently in the industry is the abuse of prepaid credit cards. With some people, these cards are a blessing. They are a safety measure to prevent bank fraud, and can also help with setting a spending limit. One such story came from a woman who used a prepaid card on a Stop Smoking trial offer…several days later she received a call from her prepaid card company notifying her that someone had attempted to charge a thousand dollar set of one-way tickets to Egypt onto her prepaid card. Since there was obviously not that much on the card, the charge was denied, and later examined by the bank. Had she not used the prepaid, the charge very well could have gone through on her checking account, causing long-term financial problems as she fought the charge.

Sadly, not everyone uses the cards as she did. Some abuse the fact that companies cannot take any more out of the card that what is already there.  They register for a number of trials, and then throw the card away. The companies, unaware of this, then attempt to charge the card, and find to their dismay that there are no funds available. This fraud is one of the worst kinds, and has been one of the major factors that have caused the GPT industry to take such a hit. Fortunately, some companies are now realizing what is occurring, and have been taking such steps as to contact collection agencies, and to report these onto credit history bureaus.

So who does fraud affect? Besides the obvious answer of site owners, it also affects everyone on the site. By causing the owner to have a record of false leads, eventually an affiliate will completely withdraw from a site, causing everyone on the site to face the problem of not being paid. It affects the advertisers because they are paying out a lot of money for what they are hoping are valid leads. In the end, the person most affected is the very person who engages in fraudulent activities. It negatively affects their lives, their conscience, and their finances.

If you have anything to add to this article, or have more questions about fraud and what it constitutes, drop me a note through my Contact page.