FraudScore Turns 10: Our Journey to a Global Anti-Fraud Platform

Ten years is a long time in technology, and it’s long enough to watch an industry change, reinvent itself, and learn a few lessons along the way. When we started working on FraudScore in 2015, ad fraud wasn't a mysterious topic. Marketers already knew it existed; many had felt its impact firsthand. But much of the market was still operating on assumptions and surface-level checks. Fraud was something they tried to “control”, not fully understand. We came from inside performance marketing. We dealt with questionable traffic, unexpected spikes, suspicious installs – the familiar signs for anyone who worked with performance traffic. We built a tool simply to understand what was happening in our own campaigns, and very quickly realized that if we wanted true objectivity, we had to make a choice. So we closed our CPA network and committed fully to building an independent product. That decision defined everything that followed.

Early years: clarity builds trust

Those first years were about proving not every spike was fraud; not every clean dataset meant safety. The industry needed clearer diagnostics, more transparency, and a shared language about what “quality” really meant. We began analyzing behavior: post-install events, patterns, clusters, the small details that reveal big things. Marketers who had estimated “maybe 5% questionable traffic” suddenly had insight showing 20%+, and in some markets much higher. By 2018, the numbers spoke loudly: on average, more than 22% of traffic worldwide showed signs of fraud, reaching up to ~40% in certain regions. It wasn’t about creating panic, it was simply about showing reality.

Growing with the market

As digital advertising matured, so did fraud. It moved into attribution paths, retention curves, and user behavior. We rebuilt our architecture, expanded to Europe, and integrated machine learning. The product became not just a detector, but a system for decision-making and fairness for advertisers, agencies, and platforms who wanted to rely on data instead of assumptions. When the pandemic shifted the world online, the challenge accelerated. In some campaigns, fraudulent activity approached 90%. Weekly manual checks were no longer enough. Real-time protection went from idea to necessity, and we built it. Later, deeper ecosystem partnerships became natural. In 2024, our integration with AppMetrica marked a new phase: fraud-risk intelligence embedded directly into analytics workflows, not sitting on the sidelines. Anti-fraud was no longer a “tool.” It became part of infrastructure.

2025 and beyond

Fraud rarely looks like fraud today. It optimized. Sometimes it is indistinguishable from the actual user behavior. In mid-2025, global fraud levels reached their highest point in five years – nearly half of traffic in some segments. So we built tools for nuance for the kinds of fraud you don’t catch by staring at a dashboard, but by understanding intent and context. Our mission didn’t change. Our methods evolved.

Looking forward

If the last decade in advertising was about scale and automation, the next one will be about trust, signal quality, and context. Fraud evolves. So do we. Grounded in data, independent in decisions, and always exploring new fraud patterns before they hit the market. We don’t think anti-fraud is about fear. We think it’s about clarity for the industry we work in and believe in. Ten years ago, we built a small tool to answer our own questions. Today, we support advertisers and partners around the world still guided by the same idea: know what’s real, and make decisions with confidence. Thank you for being part of this journey. We’re just getting started!

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  • Since we use an MMP that is mainly popular in the CIS market, and most of our audience also comes from the CIS, FraudScore has become one of the most effective and affordable anti-fraud tools for us. It works very well with local MMPs, shows high accuracy in detecting fraud, and continues to be one of the leading anti-fraud solutions in the CIS region.
    Dmitrii Kaplan, Head of Digital at Twinby
  • We use FraudScore to monitor traffic quality in our advertising campaigns. The service helps us see the full picture across traffic sources, detect anomalies in time, and avoid unnecessary spending. The interface is simple and the data is presented clearly, which makes it easy to use both daily and for reporting.
    Konstantin Artemev, Performance Marketing Manager at Yandex
  • We use FraudScore to regularly assess traffic quality across our CPI and CPA campaigns. The tool allows us to quickly identify reliable traffic sources, flag potentially problematic ones, and adjust campaign settings in a timely manner as conditions change. FraudScore’s reporting is clear, well-structured, and easy to work with, which significantly simplifies decision-making. Today, FraudScore is fully integrated into our standard traffic management workflow and has become an essential part of it.
    Ruslan Maksimov, Head of Digital at MyBox
  • FraudScore has become part of our regular traffic verification process for clients. It helps us detect unusual activity early, analyze traffic sources, and avoid fraud-related risks. The tool fits naturally into our team’s workflow and helps maintain stable campaign quality without adding extra workload.
    Nikita Knyazev Senior Account Manager at ProContext Agency
  • We use FraudScore when managing our clients’ campaigns, where maintaining transparency and traffic quality is essential. The tool helps us quickly identify suspicious sources and understand how they affect performance, which significantly simplifies traffic control and reduces the amount of manual checks. The reports are convenient both for our internal team and for client communication. I’d also highlight the wide range of filters, fraud reasons, and additional data that we don’t have access to in the tracker as one of FraudScore’s key advantages. This gives us a much deeper understanding of what’s happening and helps us make more accurate decisions.
    Aleksandra Milyaeva, Lead Partner Manager at Realweb Agency
  • It’s important for us that advertising traffic is high-quality and brings real users to the platform. FraudScore helps us monitor campaign activity in real time and spot any irregularities or suspicious patterns. This allows us to optimize buying decisions faster and manage budgets more effectively.
    Andrey Kataev, Head of Performance Marketing at Start.ru
  • FraudScore’s fraud monitoring system is particularly useful in this regard as it allows daily check on affiliates conversions and indicates the level of fraud detected for each conversion. The fact that the system not only monitors normal desktop traffic, but, also tracks and accurately reports on mobile traffic in relation to Emulators, VPN’s, Bot farms and IP pattern recognition allows us to make informed decisions when reviewing assigned affiliate caps and encouraging more traffic.
    Darren Williamson, Managing Director at CAN
  • FraudScore has easy to handle and fast APIs which permitted us to integrate fraud analysis findings into our own dashboards. Their own interface is very intuitive and offers infinite possibilities in terms of filtering and digging into data. FraudScore team is very receptive to users feedback and continuously introduces improvements to their product.
    Luis Barrague, COO at Headway Digital, Spain
  • For more than two years of working with mobile traffic we have been tried a lot of anti-fraud services offered by the market. Therefore we can confidently say that the truly worthwhile solution is the FraudScore. Strong technologies, convenient interface and the most effective support – it’s all about FraudScore. Since we started collaboration with this service the volume of fraud traffic in Zorka.Network has been almost reduced to zero.
    Oleg Gorelik, Affiliate Director at Zorka.Network
  • Fraudscore has been our first line of defense against measuring questionable traffic. As the mobile digital advertising landscape continually expands, it becomes complex as it relates to user attribution measurement. The need for precise data has never been more important to the success of our business and our clients marketing efforts. FraudScore’s engineers made integration seamless and user friendly. The user interface allows us to interpret the data correctly and in real-time to make the right decisions as it relates to protecting our clients brand integrity. I highly recommend their services.
    Moufid Al-Joundi, Curate Mobile
  • At Brisk Ads we take drastic measures to combat fraud, and with the help of FraudScore we are able to detect and eliminate any suspicious traffic. With the in-depth reports provided, we are able to identify any questionable sources; making sure that our clients only pay for legit and profitable users.
    Omar Mostafa, Brisk Ads
  • We rely on FraudScore for projects where fast traffic evaluation and clear client communication are essential. The tool allows us to quickly assess incoming traffic and get a full picture without long exports or manual analysis. We especially appreciate its reliability and how easy the reports are to interpret, even for team members who aren’t deeply involved in anti-fraud. It simplifies communication and helps us make decisions faster.
    Nikita Shamin, Head of the Application Promotion Department at MediaNation Agency