Case Study: Online Social Community achieves major affiliate fraud reduction with TransUnion

Social Network Fights Back on Affiliate Fraud and Wins

Online Social Community, a large social network with tens of millions of members, was struggling with affiliate fraud that created fake registrations, disrupted legitimate users, and paid out commissions on bogus sign-ups. The company needed a better way to uncover fraud hidden across complex publisher and sub-publisher networks, and turned to TransUnion’s iovation fraud prevention service to investigate suspicious device, IP, and ISP patterns.

TransUnion’s iovation solution helped the community connect accounts, devices, and locations, pinpoint the exact publisher ad being abused, and take action without affecting the user experience. As a result, the company closed 400 bogus accounts tied to a single publisher and saw nearly all fraud drop after implementation, with reported savings growing from hundreds of dollars a month to thousands.