Mar 13, 2025

How to Spot Affiliate Marketing Scams Before They Spread

As the web evolved, brands needed smarter, scalable ways to reach people without burning through ad budgets. So, affiliate marketing was born. Independent marketers could now earn a commission for every sale, click, or lead they drove the businesses’ way. Initially, it was performance-based and easy to track, so it naturally gained popularity. But as with all good things, wherever there’s money and traffic, scams are bound to follow sooner or later. In this article, we’ll go over affiliate scams, how to spot them early, and why catching them in time is crucial for protecting your business.

For years, affiliate marketing has been one of the internet’s most powerful growth engines. It drives sales, builds brand awareness, and has the power to create meaningful partnerships that benefit both parties. With this kind of growth came complexities. Today, it’s not just rogue affiliates playing the system for extra income. Now, entire operations are built around deceptive practices. These are not mistakes but instead calculated moves by affiliates who are either cutting corners — or deliberately exploiting brands. Below, we have outlined the most common affiliate marketing scams.

Misleading or False Advertising

Affiliates can engage in deceptive tactics that harm your brand and violate compliance standards. Common issues include false advertising, such as exaggerated bonuses like “Get $500 free!” that mislead users and lead to chargebacks or regulatory fines. Brand impersonation is also widespread—unauthorized use of your logo, name, or lookalike URLs creates confusion and dilutes brand trust. Others use cloaking and traffic laundering, hiding adult content or unapproved offers behind seemingly compliant ads. Affiliates may also violate geo or channel restrictions, running campaigns in banned regions or on prohibited platforms—putting your brand at legal risk. Fake traffic, generated by bots, inflates metrics while skewing analytics and triggering fraud alerts. Some affiliates skip sponsored content disclosures, violating goverment regulations. More sophisticated fraudsters use compliance evasion techniques—rotating domains, spoofing locations, and masking violations from monitoring tools—making them hard to detect without active oversight.

How To Effectively Monitor Affiliates?

Affiliate fraud isn’t falling behind anytime soon – and neither should your monitoring strategy. Industry leaders are utilizing a combination of AI tools and cyber security professionals to identify potential red flags. That’s why Bluepear includes 24/7 monitoring of brand queries, ensuring no misuse slips through the cracks. With deep keyword insights and ad data, you can see exactly when and where your brand or offers are being misrepresented — whether it’s in a shady ad, unauthorized blog post, or suspicious paid search campaign. And when violations do occur, you won’t be left guessing. You’ll get concrete proof — including links, affiliate IDs, and screenshots — all neatly packaged and ready to drop into your following report. Plus, with a dedicated account manager by your side, you’ll always have expert support to interpret the findings and act fast. In short, it’s a full compliance command center — without the chaos.

With the proper monitoring tools, clear policies, and a watchful eye (or, better yet, a compliance partner who never blinks), you can run profitable programs without worrying about brand impersonators or stealthy scammers slipping through. So before the next headline breaks or the next Honey-style scandal unfolds, ask yourself: who’s really watching your affiliates?

Biggest Affiliate Scam of 2024

Now that you are up to date with the various affiliate scams out there let’s discuss the biggest one that came to light in late December 2024 – the Honey affiliate scam. The spotlight turned on PayPal’s Honey extension after YouTuber MegaLag dropped a 23-minute exposé accusing Honey of hijacking affiliate commissions right at checkout. Here’s what allegedly happened: when a shopper used an influencer’s affiliate link and then clicked Honey’s coupon pop-up, Honey would reportedly erase the original tracking cookie and insert its own—crediting itself for the sale, even if it provided no coupon. The backlash was swift: Honey lost around 3 million Chrome users in just two weeks—and has since lost about 4 million users total. The uproar even spurred Google to revise its Chrome extension policies in March 2025, prohibiting extensions from injecting affiliate links without delivering transparent, user-benefitting functionality.