Fraud Protection: Referrals per IP

The Referrals per IP setting is used to define the maximum number of referrals that will be recorded for a given user. A referral is recorded when a user's unique referral link is clicked and then the person who clicked subsequently signs up.

For example, a user (Jane) signs up and posts their referral link on Facebook. Five friends, each with a unique IP address, see and click the link. Three of the friends sign up and the remaining two friends bounce without signing up. Three referrals will be recorded for Jane. 

You can set this via Settings > Fraud Protection > Referrals per IP in your project dashboard. Make sure to save your changes.

Recommendations

People sharing the same computer network will have the same IP address. For example, family members in the same home will have the same IP address, people surfing the web from the same coffeeshop will have the same IP address, and employees at the same company may have the same IP address.

If your end-users are primarily consumers surfing the web from their home or a coffeeshop, then we recommend setting the Referrals per IP to a low value, such as 3.

If your end-users are primarily employees surfing the web from their office, then we recommend setting the Referrals per IP to a higher value, depending on the number of employees at the company. If your audience is startups, then you may choose to set Referrals per IP to 10. If your audience is enterprises, then you may choose to set Referrals per IP to 500.

Fraudulent Scenarios

Let's say you set the Referrals per IP to 3 and a user (Jane) signs up and obtains a unique referral link. Jane attempts to cheat the referral system and move ahead in the waitlist by creating multiple fake referrals. She does this by copying her referral link and following it 5 times from different computers, phones, and tablets in her home. After each click she signs up with a different email address she owns. In this case, the first 3 referrals will be recorded and the following 2 will be ignored. Jane will have a total of 3 referrals.