Advocate Fraud Bans: What They Mean and How They Work

What is a fraud ban?
What happens to a banned account?
How does Duel detect fraud?
Why might an advocate be incorrectly banned?
How to request a review

Fraud bans are applied to advocate accounts that show strong signals of automated or coordinated activity. This article explains what a ban means, how Duel identifies fraud, and what to do if you believe an advocate in your programme has been suspended incorrectly.

What is a fraud ban?

When an advocate account is suspended for fraud, their account is flagged and they lose the ability to log in.

The account itself remains intact: their points, completed tasks, and history are all preserved. Nothing is deleted.

When a member account is suspended for fraud, their email address in our system is renamed by appending _fraud to it.

For example:

Before ban: jane@gmail.com
After ban: jane@gmail.com_fraud

What happens to a banned account?

A banned account is suspended immediately. This means:

The advocate can no longer log in to your programme
Reward distribution to that account is paused
Their activity history and points balance are retained in full

Bans are reversible. If a ban is lifted, the advocate's account is fully restored and any rewards owed during the suspension period are recalculated and distributed automatically.

How does Duel detect fraud?

Fraud detection runs across advocate activity within your programme. Accounts are flagged based on a combination of behavioural signals. No single signal triggers a ban in isolation.

Why might an advocate be incorrectly banned?

Each advocate has a separate account record per brand. If a fraud ban is applied incorrectly, it may affect the wrong brand record for that person, suspending their account in your programme when the suspected fraudulent activity was associated with a different brand entirely.

If an advocate reaches out to say they cannot access your programme and you have no reason to suspect fraud, it is worth raising this with Duel for review.

💡 Pro Tip: Ask the advocate to confirm the email address they use to log in. This is the most useful piece of information for Duel to investigate quickly.

How to request a review

If you believe an advocate has been incorrectly suspended:

Note the advocate's email address and your brand name.
Contact Duel Support by raising a ticket.
Duel will verify the advocate's engagement on your programme and confirm what caused the ban and membership be restored if needed.

🚨 Reverting a ban on your programme does not affect that advocate's status on any other brand. Each programme's records are managed independently.