How Sharklio Checks Traffic Quality

How does Sharklio check traffic quality?

Sharklio checks traffic in layers: every campaign is reviewed before it goes live, advertisers review task completions before they are paid, users are limited in how often they can complete a campaign, the service applies rate limits, and our staff run manual checks. Results that look wrong can be rejected or reversed, and serious problems can lead to held earnings or a suspended integration.

This page explains those layers at the level our Terms of Service describe them, and what each outcome means for a publisher. It deliberately leaves out how the checks work in detail. That is not secrecy for its own sake: every detail we publish is a detail someone could use to get around the checks, and honest publishers are the ones who would pay for that.

The checks named in our Terms

Section 10 of the Terms lists how we protect advertisers, publishers and honest end users. Here is what each layer does and who runs it.

According to the Terms, these checks may consider activity history, completion patterns, security challenges, and information from advertisers and offer partners. That is as far as we go in public. We do not publish thresholds, scores, the order in which checks run, or which tools we use.

Advertisers add their own layer. For task campaigns, the advertiser sees the details of each completion, such as the proof, country and device, and approves or rejects it within the approval window of that campaign. For multi-step offer campaigns, the advertiser’s server reports each step, and the advertiser can reverse a step it later finds invalid, for example because of fraud, within the period shown in its dashboard.

What the checks look for

The checks look for activity that breaks the Terms, in six broad groups: automation, a disguised location or device, repeated completions of the same offer, false information or forged proof, artificially generated results, and publisher-side abuse such as completing offers on your own wall. We describe them only at that level. The full rulebook, with what each rule means in practice, is in the traffic quality rules, and the rules for promoting the wall are in Promoting your offerwall.

What happens to a suspicious result

Every result on your wall reaches your server as a postback with a status, and the same transaction ID follows it from start to finish. A result that raises questions moves through the same statuses as any other; it simply has more chances to end up rejected or reversed.

A reversal can come from our staff, from an advertiser who reverses an offer step, or from an offer partner. The Terms say plainly that when a result is rejected or reversed, for example for fraud, false information or unmet requirements, the amount is deducted from your balance or offset against your next settlement, including after it was reported to you. Reversed results appear under Reports, Chargebacks in your dashboard, with the reason.

When you receive a status 2 postback, take the matching reward back from your user. The Offer lifecycle and Chargebacks docs show example sequences, and Publisher earnings, settlement, and reversals explains how this affects your balance and your payouts.

When the problem is bigger than one result

Where a check indicates a material risk of fraud or a breach of the Terms, the Terms allow us to act at a wider level. Depending on what we find, we may:

• reject or reverse completions;
• block a device or an end user from offers;
• hold or reverse publisher earnings;
• request verification;
• restrict parts of the service;
• suspend an integration immediately where it presents a security, legal or fraud risk, in which case we tell you why;
• close an account.

Amounts derived from fraudulent or prohibited activity are not payable. If an account is closed for a breach, its owner may not open another one.

Account review and how to challenge a decision

Not every flag means fraud, and we know that. Shared networks, family devices and honest mistakes happen, which is why the Terms build in a human step. Decisions that close a business account or withhold a publisher settlement are reviewed by a person. If you believe any decision was wrong, write to [email protected] with the app, the transaction IDs involved and what you know about the users behind them. Specific information helps far more than a general complaint.

Some questions are not ours to decide. On Sharklio campaigns, the advertiser decides whether a task completion met its requirements, and users can dispute a rejection, which our staff then decide. Third-party offers are confirmed on the partner’s own schedule, and some only after a holding period.

How publishers keep quality high

The checks above catch problems after they reach the wall. The cheapest problem is the one that never reaches it, and three habits do most of the work: pass a stable user ID and keep link security on, so repeated completions are visible and nobody can open the wall as someone else; enforce one account per person and no earning on a VPN on your own property; and act on every reversal, both by taking the reward back and by asking which users and sources it came from. Stop multi-accounting and VPN abuse shows how to build those checks on your side.

Your dashboard helps: Reports, Conversions shows every result with its status, and Reports, Chargebacks lists every reversal with its reason. A rising share of rejections or reversals from one source is the signal to look closer.

Frequently asked questions