We have a system of CGI scripts written in Perl which reads cookies with a 'partner_id'. People can sign up to be partners and put banner ads on their sites. When someone visits a partner site, they get a cookie from us with the partner id. If someone clicks on a banner, it takes them to our site. If they buy something, the partner gets a small sum of money.

Some "partners" have registered variations of our domain name and set the cookie directly and redirect back to us. If someone mistypes the domain name, they only see our site. If they buy something, someone who registered the typo is getting commissions.

Aside from having terms of service which attempt to forbid this, can you recommend technical solutions to this problem? Even being able to minimize the problem would help.


In reply to Detecting redirect fraud? by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.