Stop fake referrals
without blocking real ones
Waitlister checks referrals from several angles and quietly withholds credit from the fake ones — without disrupting legitimate signups. Configurable from off to strict in one click.
10,000+ founders protect their leaderboards with Waitlister
One bad actor can wreck
your entire leaderboard
Referral programs work — until someone figures out they can game the system. Here's what happens when there's no fraud detection.
Fake signups flood the list
One person creates 50 throwaway emails — mailinator, tempmail, plus-addressed Gmail variants — and "refers" themselves to the top of the leaderboard.
Legitimate referrers give up
Real subscribers who shared your waitlist see a fraud account at #1 with 200 "referrals." They stop sharing. Your viral loop dies.
Your data becomes useless
You can't tell real signups from fake ones. Your subscriber count is inflated. Your email deliverability tanks because half the list is garbage addresses.
Several checks that catch fraud
without blocking real signups
Waitlister doesn't rely on a single check. It looks at every referral from several angles, and when one looks fake, the referral credit is silently withheld — the signup still goes through, but the referrer doesn't get rewarded.
Same-device detection
Recognizes one device signing up more than once under different email addresses.
Network checks
Notices when referrals keep arriving from the same place — a common sign of one person behind many accounts.
Duplicate email detection
Catches the same inbox signing up again behind a disguised version of its address.
Burst detection
Flags referral activity that moves faster than real sharing does. Real viral sharing doesn't happen in machine-gun bursts.
Disposable email blocking
Blocks known burner email services. These addresses exist for minutes — nobody uses them to sign up for a waitlist they actually care about.
Look-alike addresses
Spots batches of near-identical addresses that look unique one by one but clearly come from the same person.
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Silent fraud detection
that never blocks real signups
- —Sign up normally, get a thank-you page, receive a welcome email
- —Referrer gets full credit and points
- —Webhooks fire, position is assigned, everything works
- —Signup still goes through — the person joins the waitlist normally
- —Referral credit is silently withheld — the referrer gets no points
- —Flagged referrals are marked in your dashboard for your review
- —Neither side is notified — no "you've been flagged" messages
Four protection levels
Choose how aggressively Waitlister flags fraud. Change it anytime in Settings — takes effect immediately.
No fraud checks. All referrals credited. Useful for testing your referral flow with your own emails.
Catches only the most obvious fraud. Lowest risk of flagging a real referral.
Every check, tuned to catch most fraud without getting in real referrers' way. Recommended for most waitlists.
The most aggressive setting. May flag legitimate referrals from shared networks like offices or universities. Use for high-stakes campaigns.
Works via API too
If you're adding subscribers through the API, fraud detection is skipped by default (since the IP Waitlister sees is your server's). Forward the end user's IP and/or fingerprint to enable full detection.
{
"email": "user@example.com",
"metadata": {
"referred_by": "happy-star-4f3d",
"client_ip": "203.0.113.42",
"fingerprint": "abc123def456"
}
} When client_ip or fingerprint is provided, the full fraud pipeline runs. API docs →
Enable fraud detection in Settings → Referral → Fraud protection. The 'Balanced' level (default) catches most fraud — same-device signups, duplicate and throwaway emails, and suspicious bursts — without getting in real referrers' way.
The key: fraud detection is silent. Fake signups still go through (so the fraudster doesn't know they've been caught), but the referral credit is withheld. The referrer doesn't get points.
First, set fraud protection to 'Strict' to stop new fake referrals immediately. Then review your subscriber list — signups from known disposable domains and those with withheld referral credits are visible in your dashboard. For existing damage: you can manually adjust points via the API, or remove fraudulent subscribers entirely. Going forward, fraud detection makes it very difficult for a single person to accumulate fake referrals without being caught.
On 'Balanced' (default), rarely — it's tuned with shared networks like offices, campuses and coffee shops in mind. 'Strict' is more aggressive and can flag some shared-network referrals. Use it only for high-stakes campaigns where fraud risk outweighs the risk of blocking a few legitimate ones.
Yes. In your fraud detection settings, you can add up to 5 whitelisted emails that bypass all fraud checks. This is useful when testing your referral flow with your own email addresses — you won't accidentally flag yourself as a fraudster. Alternatively, set the protection level to 'Off' temporarily during testing, then switch back to 'Balanced' before your waitlist goes live.
Several do, in different ways. LaunchList limits signups per IP and per device, blocks disposable addresses and has a review queue, on every plan. Prefinery has per-IP limits, bot blocking and "suspected cheater" flags from its Lite plan. Viral Loops flags suspicious participants, with more checks on higher plans. GetWaitlist lists CAPTCHA and email verification, but no referral-fraud detection.
Waitlister checks every referral against multiple signals: same-device, duplicate-email and throwaway-email checks with configurable protection levels, all included from the Launch plan at $19/mo.
GrowSurf checks for burner emails, data-center IPs and IP thresholds, with reCAPTCHA and fraud tagging, from its Startup plan. It's referral and affiliate software, with referral plans from $179/mo billed monthly ($125/mo yearly).
No. Fraud detection is included on the Launch plan ($19/mo) and above — the same plan that includes referrals. There's no separate add-on or per-check pricing.
Yes. This is a complementary strategy. In your thank-you page editor, turn off 'Show position' while keeping the leaderboard and referral section visible. Subscribers see the leaderboard ranked by points but never see their exact position number — removing the incentive to game from #47 to #12.
Combine this with fraud detection for a belt-and-suspenders approach. Read more about hiding positions.
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