CPA Watchdog - New Service to Fight Affiliate Fraud

[Linda Buquet]

CPA WatchDog™ is a newly launched service that claims to identify, track and prosecute affiliate fraud, recovering an affiliate network or merchant's stolen assets whenever possible.

Some of you may remember that I was a victim of affiliate fraud and identity theft a couple years ago. A huge Chinese fraud ring joined a TON of networks pretending to be Linda Buquet with 5 Star Affiliate Programs and committed numerous fraudulent transactions in my good name. It was a nightmare and I tried getting the FBI involved to no avail. Here's the story if you want more details about how they did it. Networks take note: You need to set up a big red flag and investigate every time an affiliate changes their payto address.

At any rate today I was contacted about the new CPA Watchdog service and feel it's something that some of my readers may find helpful, so wanted to do a free public service announcement about it. Here is some of the info I just received about the service.

"CPA Watchdog is the first and only 3rd party affiliate fraud protection company that identifies, tracks, and allows for the prosecution of affiliate fraud. Our comprehensive fraud monitoring services and revolutionary technologies provide Advertisers the ability to protect their budget against Affiliate Network and Affiliate fraud. In addition to our technology, CPA Watchdog has a exclusive partnership with the CCFA (Cyber Crimes Field Agency). The CCFA is a non for profit organization that was formed in partnership with the FBI’s, Cyber Crime Division in order to track and prosecute affiliate fraud and related crimes. This partnership allows CPA Watchdog paramount access to information that aids in the prosecution of fraudulent affiliates and affiliate networks, providing our clients the best chance of asset recovery."

Here's a diagram of how the service works and a list of benefits for affiliate networks Why do Affiliate Networks need CPA Watchdog?

You can contact them through the site or I'm happy to give you a personal introduction to my contact there.

[Rob_TID]

Linda, you know I am the first to jump all over affiliates who commit fraud, but my spidey sense is tingling with these guys.

And that is not so much from the service itself (which seems pretty good), but from some of the copywriting they use to market themselves.

From their website:

Affiliate Networks that are not monitored by CPA Watchdog™ offer little or no ability, to protect your advertising dollars from the sophisticated, ever mutating, ever evolving, fraudulent affiliate.

Absolute false and sensationalist claims like this really don't help the situation and only serve as as dishonest attempt to line their own pockets with the cash of non-informed merchants.

Seems to me that creating a false sense of the scope of the problem does just as much damage to an industry as the problem itself.

Sentences like this:

Unfortunately, Affiliate Networks are not directly incentivized to ensure all conversions are legitimate.

Now, while that is true strictly speaking, it is extremely misleading. The implication is that networks won't chase fraudsters or will do it half-heartedly. Ok, fine. WHICH networks won't chase fraudsters? Which are the "fraudulant affiliate networks" that they mention on their site? (I bet you a hundred dollars they won't name a single network publicly). Sentences like this simply serve to make ill-informed merchants even MORE sceptical of our industry, unless of course they use this service which will save them from all us scammers. How convenient!

Now, these are just a couple of the things that raise the hairs on the back of my hands, and I am totally open to being converted to one of these guys' biggest cheerleaders, but I seriously question the postive impact of their own marketing copy on our industry.

[Linda Buquet]

You make some good points Rob. I don't know them, they just sent me some info today and I just try to pass on new info or resources that may be helpful to people. Sometimes I don't look critically enough maybe, just pass on what I find if it looks potentially helpful and let others make their own judgements.

[Rob_TID]

I am most certain they could be very helpful to many merchants and even some networks.

But dishonest marketing from a company that proposes enforcing honesty seems a little hypocritical to me.

Would be interested to hear what they have to say.

[IB affiliates]

Linda, thanks for the lead, I will be reading up on them. Affiliate fraud detection is always a big interest to us.

Rob, you have some good points. Definitely read between the lines!

[ernie_cpawatchdog]

Hi Rob,

I was reviewing your post and wanted to offer a few thoughts that will hopefully convert you from being skeptic to being a big fan of what we are out to accomplish.

CPA WatchDog and the CCFA (Cyber Crimes Field Agency) were created to help clean up the fraud in the affiliate marketing space, giving the industry greater credibility as a marketing outlet for large and small companies alike. We think that the absence of fraud will increase the amount of money spent on affiliate marketing, increase payouts to affiliates, and decrease the cost per client acquisition to the advertiser. This increased efficiency will help everyone in the industry – affiliates, advertisers, and networks. Bottom line – less fraud, more for everyone else (affiliates, advertisers, and networks).

The affiliate industry’s input and best interests are very important to us. It is absolutely NOT the intention of CPA Watchdog to alienate or mislead the same individuals we are trying to help (Affiliates, Networks and Advertisers).

As for our statement:
“Affiliate Networks that are not monitored by CPA Watchdog™ offer little or no ability, to protect your advertising dollars from the sophisticated, ever mutating, ever evolving, fraudulent affiliate.”

We were not intending to claim that all Networks are doing absolutely nothing to combat affiliate fraud. In fact, there are some Networks that we feel are industry leaders in affiliate fraud prevention and advertiser protection. With that being said, even Networks that lead the industry in affiliate fraud prevention are not able to provide the level of protection available from CPA WatchDog. In addition to being a 3rd party that displays our fraud results directly to the advertiser, our monitoring technology compares data collected across all Networks, not just across a single Network.

For over a year our software and systems have been in beta test with a select group of advertisers. During these tests we collected data in regards to affiliate fraud & other crimes that range from entry level fraud, to high level organized crime. Our penetration into the organized crime element together with the evidence we collected peeked the interest of the FBI. This ultimately led to CPA Watchdog forming a separate entity called the CCFA (Cyber Crimes Field Agency). The CCFA is a non for profit organization whose sole purpose is to share data collected from the CPA WatchDog technology with the FBI to ultimately identify, track, and apprehend these organized crime groups.

One obstacle we current face is to educate the industry about the problem and our solution without sounding "pitchy" or self promoting. Rob, any advice from you or anyone reading this post on how we can better convey our message would be very much appreciated.

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Ernie,

Thanks for coming over to weigh in. I've been meaning to let you know about this post.
Glad you found it and came over to comment.

[Rob_TID]

Hi Ernie,

Thanks for your reply.

I think you offer a good service.

I am simply concerned that the tone of your website hurts my reputation. I am an honest affiliate. I work with honest networks. I am totally transparent in how I promote. Sentences such as the ones I pointed out create an environment in which people assume I am a fraud and frankly, I don't appreciate having to constantly defend myself.

Really, all you would need to do to make me one of your cheerleaders is change some of the written copy on your website.

As for our statement:
“Affiliate Networks that are not monitored by CPA Watchdog™ offer little or no ability, to protect your advertising dollars from the sophisticated, ever mutating, ever evolving, fraudulent affiliate.”

We were not intending to claim that all Networks are doing absolutely nothing to combat affiliate fraud.

No, but you did claim that they were unable or almost unable to do anything. I don't know what else to say other than that this is simply false. They all have enough info in their logs to stop a lot of fraud.

I am sure your service offers great protections, so surely you can market it by showing statistics on the level of fraud loss before and after your system is implemented? If the ROI is there (which I am sure it would be), it would be a no-brainer.

Basically I am asking you to move totally away from fear driven marketing the has a negative impact on the industry to positive marketing.

[ernie_cpawatchdog]

Hi Rob,

I passed your recommendations on to our marketing director. We met and the team decided to rephrase some of the content/copy on the site.

I hope that the new content does a better job of communicating our message.

Thank you for your input.

[MTollhouseaff]

Something sounds really fishy here. Ernie seems to be an old famous spammer. I guess there is no alterior motive behind CPAWatchdog huh?

It sounds to me like the CPAWatchdog guys are suggesting that they can solve scams by using a new one called CPAWatchdog...

Here is a little bit of background on our new friend Ernie:

Battle of wits over spam / THE SPAMMERS / E-mailers shift business plans to avoid label