Rep Data’s Pre-Survey Fraud Prevention, powered by Research Defender, screens respondents before they enter a survey. It evaluates respondents against multiple technical, behavioural and reputation signals to identify potentially fraudulent activity, helping research teams protect sample quality from the start of fieldwork.

Key Capabilities

• Digital Fingerprinting: Analyse browser, device, network and other technical signals to identify potentially suspicious respondents.
• Fraud Screening: Check respondents against multiple fraud indicators, including bots, VPNs, proxies and other suspicious activity.
• Fraud Suppression: Maintain a suppression list to identify and block previously detected fraudulent respondents.
• Hyperactivity Detection: Identify respondents showing unusually high levels of survey activity across a defined period.
• Reputation Checks: Cross-reference external reputation data as part of the overall fraud assessment.
• Real-Time Scoring: Assess respondents before survey entry and provide a threat score based on the signals detected.

How It Works

1. Add a redirect or integrate the fraud prevention tool with your survey platform.
2. Each respondent is scanned and assessed against technical, behavioural and reputation signals before entering the questionnaire.
3. Potentially fraudulent respondents are blocked, while respondents that meet the required quality criteria are passed through to the survey.

Use Cases

• Online Surveys — screen respondents before they enter quantitative research studies.
• Sample Quality Management — add an additional quality layer to sample sourcing.
• Fraud Prevention — identify potentially fraudulent or automated survey activity.
• Multi-Source Research — apply consistent fraud screening across different sample sources.
• Large-Scale Studies — screen high volumes of respondents before they reach the survey.
• Tracking Research — help maintain consistent sample quality across recurring studies.

Pre-Survey Fraud Prevention can be used alongside Rep Data’s Sample Sourcing and In-Survey Data Cleaning tools to provide quality controls throughout fieldwork.