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# Click fraud protection

> How Pixalate detects click fraud (click farms, fast clicks, duplicate clicks, high CTR traffic, data center traffic and inflated click rates), and how to measure it in Analytics, block it in real time with the Fraud API, and block it pre-bid with data feeds.

Click fraud is any click on an ad that doesn't come from a real person with genuine interest: bots, scripts, click
farms, infected devices, or integration problems that count the same click more than once. If you pay per click, or
optimize toward clicks, every invalid click costs you money and skews your results.

Pixalate measures clicks as well as impressions. It applies its impression invalid traffic (IVT) signals to clicks,
and adds click-specific detection on top, so you can see click fraud by type, publisher, app, seller and campaign.

## What Pixalate detects

Every invalid click is classified into an IVT type from [IVT Taxonomy 2.0](/trust/ivt-taxonomy). The click-specific
types are:

| IVT Taxonomy 2.0 type     | Code   | What it means                                                                                  |
| ------------------------- | ------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Click Farms               | `2301` | Traffic from IPs where a statistically inflated number of devices generate coordinated clicks. |
| Infected Device Clicks    | `2302` | Clicks generated by one device at a statistically inflated rate.                               |
| Fraudulent Clicks         | `1108` | Clicks recorded too soon after their impression for a person to have reacted.                  |
| Repeat Click Transactions | `1102` | Clicks with the same ID and attributes generated multiple times; usually an integration issue. |

Clicks are also checked against every other IVT type, such as **Data Center Traffic** (`1301`), automated browsing
and proxy traffic. In Analytics reports you'll also see **High CTR Traffic**, which flags creatives whose
click-through rate is anomalous for a publisher. See [Click tracking](/analytics/click-tracking#click-ivt-types) for
the names each type has in your reports.

## Three ways to act on it

#### [Measure it in Analytics](/analytics/click-tracking)

Add the Pixalate click tag next to your impression tag. Your reports then show gross, GIVT and SIVT clicks by IVT
type, publisher, app, seller and campaign.

#### [Block it in real time](/apis/fraud-api)

Check the IP address, device ID or user agent with the Fraud API before you serve, count or pay for a click. You
set your own blocking threshold.

#### [Block it pre-bid with data feeds](/data-feeds/overview)

Load Pixalate's lists of invalid IPs, device IDs, data centers and user agents into your platform, so flagged
traffic never gets a chance to click.

## Get started

1. **Measure first.** Set up [click tracking](/analytics/click-tracking) alongside your impression tag. If you sample
   traffic, sample impressions and clicks at the same rate, or the click-through rate Pixalate sees will be wrong.
2. **Find the sources.** In Analytics, add the **Fraud Type** dimension, then break invalid clicks down by publisher,
   app or seller. See [Run and customize reports](/analytics/reports).
3. **Block them.** Use the [Fraud API](/apis/fraud-api) at click or serve time, the
   [IP block lists](/data-feeds/ip-block-lists), [mobile](/data-feeds/mobile-device-ids) and
   [CTV](/data-feeds/ctv-device-ids) device ID feeds, and the [data center](/data-feeds/data-center) feed pre-bid.
4. **Recover spend.** Use the [clawback report](/analytics/clawback-report) to document invalid traffic for refund
   discussions with your partners.

## Related

* [IVT Taxonomy 2.0](/trust/ivt-taxonomy): every IVT type and its code
* [Reported IVT types](/analytics/ivt-types)
* [Fraud API risk types](/apis/fraud-api-risk-types)

Questions? Email [support@pixalate.com](mailto:support@pixalate.com).