The existence of fraudulent activity in online lead generation will come as no suprise to those in the affiliate marketing world. Four key ways to keep fraud to an absolute minimum are:

1. Transparency on your ad placement and publishers
2. Use lead management technology to detect unusual patterns of lead submissions (i.e. receiving thousands of leads at 2 oclock in the morning is highly unlikely to be genuine).
3. Tight commercial paperwork - protect yourself from paying out for invalid leads so there is no incentive for publishers to act in a fraudulent manner
4. Collect as many contact fields as possible to validate the lead as genuine. This includes full name, PAF address and IP address

Fraudulent online lead generation is an unfortunate part of todays lead marketing landscape and can destroy what would have been a succesful campaign.

So be wise to the issue and take the necssary steps above to keep fraud at bay.