Would love to hear more about any software checking for referral urls vs. ref.ID, but as said earlier in this thread it's most likely that they only change the ref.ID at the processor.
Anyway, we always look into new whales, mainly because of creditcard fraud, but during this we check suspecious conversionrates, non-refferal sales, fake info/whois and in general people we don't know. So we should be alerted if anyone stealing ref.IDs are doing a lot of sales, however as it is now I can't see a solution for checking all our resellers
Some say sponsors don't care, but that's plain stupid - either by the people saying it or the sponsors who really don't care - because eventually the "real reseller" will stop sending traffic if the ratios/sales are bad. Can only speak for ourself, but we can't afford to lose our whales becuase of this, that's for sure, so if anyone can find a solution to avoid this or prove some of our resellers are ref.ID stealing we would of course take the necessarily steps.