How iGaming can beat bonus abuse cheats
Amy Watkins
Business Development Manager
Bonus abuse in iGaming is when players exploit promotional offers meant for new users. It involves signing up to an iGaming service multiple times via multi-accounting, using marketing offers intended for new customers, and cheating the system of bonuses offered by operators.
Sign-up promos, free spins and introductory offers are all great ways to boost sales, increase brand awareness and attract new customers. But what they also attract is fraud, fraud that can lead to huge revenue losses; reportedly bonus abuse is booming costing the iGaming sector around 15% of its annual gross revenue.
“Bonus abuse is booming, reportedly costing the online gaming sector around 15% of its annual gross revenue.”
GBG is a digital identity company with 30+ years of experience in the identity verification and fraud prevention space. To help protect against gaming bonus abuse, reach out to our team.
Multiple identities and affiliate programs
Simple bonus abuse can occur when a fraudster signs up multiple times using many different identities to receive the same new customer bonus.
By registering with multiple identities, creating multiple accounts and claiming rewards, fraudsters can simply abandon accounts and repeat the process for as long as they remain undetected. Weak online identity verification checks and failure to spot fraud signals are often to blame.
Affiliate programmes also attract bonus cheats. On signing up to a casino or iGaming affiliate programme the fraudster refers leads who are only interested in sign-up incentives, pocketing cost-per-lead commissions, or generating fake traffic to earn cost-per-click commissions.
Trusted consumer insights from beyond your business
So, how to beat the bonus cheats?
All this identity fraud trickery can mean your new customer bonus is missing its mark and costing your business dear. It can also add another layer of complexity in filtering valued new customers from bad or fake ones.
To beat the bonus abuse cheats, first you have to spot them and there are various signals to watch out for and be wise to:
Suspicious IP
Visitors using a VPN, TOR browser, or blacklisted residential proxies.
Suspicious device
Repeat visitors using a similar combination of hardware and software.
Suspicious speed
Fraudsters may sign up significantly faster if they’ve done it before.
Suspicious exits
Quick cashouts are a flag of possible fraudsters. Fake accounts often dump chips or withdraw winnings much faster after registration.
Suspicious patterns of play
Some games are likely to attract more fraudsters than others, especially low-odds games that minimise risk.
“In GBG Trust tests carried out on 100,000 customer identity records by one iGaming business, 88% of low-scoring (1-100) identities were committing bonus abuse or other fraud.”
Player Trust Scores
Sharing consumer intelligence between iGaming businesses is a great way to beat the bonus abuse cheats. GBG Trust is a data network that does exactly that.
The GBG Trust Network delivers a Trust Score for each digital identity appearing on your site, flagging any signal of suspicious data patterns or activity detected across all iGaming businesses in the network. Data inconsistencies, data manipulation and high-velocity data submissions linked to that digital identity indicating bonus abuse or other fraud will show up in the score.
In GBG Trust tests carried out on 100,000 customer identity records by one iGaming business, 88% of low-scoring (1-100) identities were committing bonus abuse or other fraud.
Suspicious Mr C.
Mr. C is a real example of serial bonus abuser; fraudulently taking advantage of free spins and introductory offers by pretending to be a different customer each time.
Network anomaly signals
- Same person different address within 7 days
- Multiple same person + address + different DOB
- Multiple same mobile + different person and address
- Multiple same email + different person and address
Network velocity signals
- Person + address (multiple)
- Person + email (multiple)
- Person + mobile (multiple)
- Mobile + email (multiple)
Data validation anomaly
- Middle name contains no vowels
Mr C. created multiple accounts, each time making subtle identity data changes. Within a few months, he attempted over 3000 applications with 18 companies and had associated himself with five different addresses, subtle changes in name, address, date of birth and contact details.
The Trust Network immediately flagged this behaviour and Mr. C began generating a very low Trust Score. Network rules were identifying suspicious anomalies and velocity within the original iGaming company. Meanwhile, this real-time shared consumer intelligence was alerting other gaming companies in the Trust Network to Mr C’s bonus abuse attempts.
Businesses reporting the same or increased promotion abuse in 2023
Player Email Intelligence
Email Intelligence is a discrete solution offering simple but effective protection against promotion abusers. This passive identity check can be set to occur silently in the background when players sign up for your iGaming service.
An email address is a unique identifier that is always present in onboarding data. As most of us have held the same email address for over a decade, this identity attribute offers a rich source of transactional and behavioural history that can help beat bonus abuse and stop fraud.
Email fraud signals
Check to ensure the domain and email address are real and are not associated with a high-risk country or with previous promotion abuse or fraud activity.
Email age check
Check when an email address first appeared in verification searches. If there is no record or only very recent activity returning, it’s a strong indicator of a scam.
Email data velocity
High-velocity email data submissions are a sure sign that someone is trying to cheat the system. If an email address appears in many searches on several sites in the last seven days it’s a clear fraud signal.
Email Intelligence analyses email data and activity for scams
Player Mobile Intelligence
Some of these bonus abuse signals can be hard or costly to spot requiring a lot of time to set up, run and analyse checks.
Mobile Intelligence allows casino or iGaming operators to flag possible fraud in real time using secure mobile operator data, by integrating simple API-based data signals into player onboarding and in-life gaming journeys:
Mobile number allocation check
Check registered mobile numbers are valid and active, not spoofed from a VOIP service, cancelled, lost, stolen or in any way compromised.
Mobile-to-person match
Match registered mobile numbers with a real customer name and address preventing the same number from being used multiple times.
SIM swap and call forwarding signals
Check registered mobile numbers have not been taken over. Signs that the SIM card associated has been swapped or call forwarding set (allowing SMS or voice OTPs to be intercepted) are both flags.
Mobile authentication
Enable secure two-factor authentication ensuring that the registered mobile device is in the hands of your customer when a new account is created, or bonuses cashed in.
Make sure your free spins don’t cost your iGaming business a fortune, speak to our trust experts about how GBG Trust, Email Intelligence and Mobile Intelligence can help your business beat bonus abuse.
Mobile Intelligence for player identity and fraud prevention
Why partner with GBG to beat gaming bonus abuse
At GBG, we help you connect safely with genuine players while keeping fraudsters out. With over 30 years of experience, we provide the data, technology, and local expertise you need to grow your iGaming business globally.
For example, you can:
Reduce iGaming fraud without slowing down genuine player onboarding
If your fraud checks are too rigid, you block the very customers you spent marketing budget to acquire. But if you don't tighten your security, fraudsters might progress further down your onboarding funnel, which then wastes costly checks and opens your platform to losses.
Our approach to fraud is built on GBG Trust, a global network that shares intelligence across 28 industries to identify serial abusers before they get onboarded. For instance, you can immediately see if a new sign-up has a history of high-velocity data submissions or suspicious anomalies on other platforms.
We strengthen this network data with specialized layers like location Intelligence and mobile intelligence to verify that a player is exactly where and who they claim to be. This means you can silently confirm a digital identity in the background using direct operator data or address verification rather than forcing every user through a manual document upload.
By combining these fraud signals, you gain a clearer view of who to trust and who to flag for closer inspection.
Build faster and more flexible player onboarding journeys with GBG Go
Your customers want a fast time to play. If your KYC (Know Your Customer) onboarding is clunky, they might quickly switch to a competitor.
We built GBG Go to allow you to build adaptable verification flows that find the right balance between speed and security.
Through one API, you can orchestrate over 80 KYC modules, including biometric facial recognition, document verification, and PEPs and sanctions screening. You can fast-track low-risk players who have a strong trust score, while only adding friction (like EDD or manual reviews) for those who trigger a red flag. This custom control lets you maximize your match rates and conversions while staying fully compliant with local regulations.
Scale your iGaming business into new markets
Expanding into new jurisdictions often means dealing with a fragmented mess of local data registries and varying compliance standards.
We solve this through our extensive global coverage, connecting you to hundreds of data sets across more than 190 countries.
We support more than 8,500 identity document types, including digital identity (Digital ID) formats, to ensure you can onboard genuine users from almost anywhere. You can also cross-reference applicants against 450 Politically Exposed Person (PEP) and sanctions lists to maintain strict compliance with global anti-money laundering regulations.
This scale is why over 20,000 customers worldwide rely on us to manage their identity verification and fraud prevention needs.
Whether you are verifying a local ID in Spain or checking mobile data in the USA, you can get a consistent, reliable result through a single integration.
To find out how GBG can help you protect your business against gaming bonus abuse and more, book a call with our team.
FAQs: Gaming bonus abuse
What is bonus abuse?
Bonus abuse, also known as promo abuse or bonus hunting, is a form of application fraud where individuals repeatedly sign up for services to exploit sign-up bonuses, welcome bonuses, or free bets intended for new and genuine customers.
This activity is particularly prevalent across online casinos, sports betting operators and other iGaming platforms, where fraudsters may create multiple accounts, use different devices or manipulate IP addresses to circumvent controls and maximise promotional rewards.
What is the GBG Trust Network?
The GBG Trust Network is a unique data network combining millions of consumer attributes gathered from a cross-sector consortium of hundreds of global businesses. Positive data matches and suspicious anomalies reveal powerful trust insights while preserving complete data privacy. These insights can help organisations identify high-risk users, detect emerging fraud patterns and strengthen verification processes.
What is Email Intelligence?
Email Intelligence prevents application fraud and promotion abuse by passively checking the transactional and behavioural history of an email address for signs of high-risk domains, previous scams, compromised accounts and potential account takeovers, and other fraud signals.
What is Mobile Intelligence?
Mobile Intelligence silently authenticates your customer's digital identity by matching the individual to their mobile device and delivering the extra confidence that you are dealing with a real identity and a legitimate customer. Combined with ID verification and other KYC checks, mobile intelligence strengthens fraud prevention strategies while helping you maintain a seamless onboarding experience.
How can businesses identify synthetic identities during onboarding?
Detecting synthetic identities requires a layered approach that combines identity verification, device intelligence and behavioural analytics. By integrating KYC checks with network intelligence like GBG Trust and machine learning models, you can identify inconsistencies across customer data and uncover fabricated identities.
How does GBG help detect bonus abuse and fraud rings?
GBG combines identity, device, email and network intelligence to identify suspicious behaviours associated with fraud rings and repeat offenders. By analysing signals across multiple data sources, you can uncover coordinated abuse patterns, detect linked accounts, and prevent fraudulent users from exploiting promotional offers at scale.
