Signups via proxy server - is there ever a good reason?
 

Or is it always fraud?

I have been seeing a lot of this lately via unrelated affiliates and I am banning people and sending them nasty letters, but I am wondering if there is anyone willing to play devil's advocate and give me one good reason why more than half of an affiliate's joins have to come from known proxy servers.

Here are some of the IP addresses I am seeing:

199.48.147.39
173.212.238.60
173.212.238.60
65.172.48.18
65.60.22.150
67.19.20.162
205.138.115.85

why would anyone put his cc info into proxy server? fraud sure :2 cents:

I have occasionally used proxies myself as I live abroad and find non US residents get discriminated pretty badly due to high fraud levels coming from certain countries.

So I use proxies to stream amazon videos, to order electronics from egghead, sometimes to sign up for affiliate programs, and also to check what contextual ads are showing in certain regions. But I have always thought not too many people do this.

people are fairly savvy these days , plenty of reasons.. they are using a one time cc and don't want the history is one i would think is common. obviously fraud is another reason.

i notice one of those ip's listed directly as an ip to watch hulu from outside us

was his name jay noelly or ****noelly@yahoo

proxies are handy if you live in a Muslim country :)

Could be in a hospital or a business with a filter.

Who? the affiliate? no. there are several and none are named that.

50% proxies is pretty high but you probably shouldn't get too suspicious if it is under 20%. There are legitimate reasons to use a proxy such as to get around a filter or protect your privacy better from a local internet provider.

edit: There is also some spyware which filters traffic through proxies.

Hit up the affiliates and ask them about it. Don't just ban them.

Yeah I am talking to them now, one guy is an obvious carder. 21 joins on 21 different emails, 12 IP's, all known proxies and only 3 credit card #'s

Of course he swears he is clean as a whistle and the most honest and hardest working man ever to walk the face of the earth.

The other claims he was bamboozled by his partner and knows nothing of proxies. I kinda half believe him since he set up a separate campaign for the partner's joins and all the proxies are on that campaign, but that doesn't change the action that needs to be taken or who's responsibility it is.

proxy servers are best databases of illegal activities, all have logs, and most of them, maybe all in the us, are setup by authorities. stay away of them, if you must use proxy, buy server where you need and setup your own ... :2 cents:

Where are you getting your list of know proxies ?

You are right that many affiliates are trying to use proxies & cc to do fake joins.

I know our programmer uses a proxy regularly to test our stuff as he is in eastern Europe & needs a US IP address for testing.

that's the first thing that came to mind :)

A partner that does not exist. The best scammers mix in fake joins with real ones or as you say setup the fake joins to go through separate domains or campaigns so they can distance themselves if they get caught.

I would have thought of that too, however all of these customers have a US billing address. He did mention something about servicemen in Iraq and Afghanistan but I don't know, 10 out of 19 joins via proxy seems excessive.

I put the IP's one by one in whatismyipaddress.com and look to see how far the IP is from the billing address. When an IP has been flagged as a known proxy there is a message on there that says so.

I had told this affiliate just this week that I appreciated his traffic as I had been dealing with a rash of carders and was weeding them out. He immediately requested early payout citing a family emergency so I became suspicious.

Sounds really suspicious then. One thing I would do if I were a sponsor is look to see if these affiliates have an established board presence anywhere. If not that then at least I would want to check some of their sites to verify they have been in the industry for a while (check archive.org and whois history also?). I presume most of these carders and chatters lie about the sites they own or look like they are fairly new to the industry.

If an affiliate has more then one, it fraud. There's 100s if not 1000s of these guys doing it these days. Also, I'm willing to bet his referral urls are likely all from 1 "site" because they use hitbot to drive "traffic" and many times you can't even find a link on their page. Also, if you have one, you likely have more in your program. Be sure to send their names to Paxum, because they will block their accounts as well. :pimp

What about Payoneer?

We don't offer it, so not sure where they stand on it, but I've sent like 50 of them to Paxum and they were shutdown, they told me most were India and Vietnam(which they no longer accept). :thumbsup

i dont get it., why would someone do that ? are they that stupid ?
that they were hoping to get paid after 15 days with fake logins and nobody will notice ?.,

c'mon program owners are smart.

Better use VPN if you're in a Muslim country :)

Same same if you are in an Asian country

ISPs often use transparent proxies as well....

Some of the pay-VPNs also show up as proxies. :2 cents:

Living outside the US, I use proxies daily. I have a few different ones I cycle through. There are many legitimate reasons for using a pay-VPN and/or proxy service.

Too much credit card fraud with VPN or Proxy servers.
There are few users from countries that forbid porn.

Proxy sign up at billing server = troubles

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