Stop bonus abuse draining promo budgets

Bonus abuse fraud is the exploitation of promotional offers by a bonus abuser who uses multiple identities to claim the same offer repeatedly. Casino bonus abuse is the most common form, and operators report it accounts for around 60–64% of total iGaming fraud activity.

• Welcome bonuses and signup credits claimed once per real person, then again under fake accounts.
• Free bets and deposit matches farmed at scale across coordinated account farms.
• Refer-a-friend payouts triggered between accounts the same operator controls.

ShieldLabs lets your team identify bonus abuse through persistent visitor and user identification across sessions, regardless of email, IP, or cleared cookies.

Bonus hunting (or a bonus hunt) is the practice of opening accounts specifically to claim promotional offers like welcome bonuses, free spins, and deposit matches, without intent to become a regular customer. The line between hunting and abuse is the number of identities involved.

• Bonus hunting: one bonus hunter using a single identity to chase offers; this may violate the spirit of a promotion but not its rules.
• Casino bonus hunting / bonus arbitrage: a player mathematically exploits wagering requirements for guaranteed profit, still under one identity.
• Bonus abuse: the same person uses multiple identities or accounts to claim one offer repeatedly, which crosses the line into policy and fraud territory.

ShieldLabs identifies the abuse case by linking accounts back to the same visitor and user across sessions, even when each account uses a different email, IP, or browser.

Account farming is the practice of creating and operating multiple user accounts on a single platform, usually under fake or synthetic identities, to claim bonuses, referral payouts, or promotional offers at scale. The goal is to disguise one operator behind many identities.

• Anti-detect browsers that fake a fresh device fingerprint for each account.
• VPN and proxy tunnels that swap the egress IP per session.
• Prepaid cards and disposable emails that make each account look unrelated.

ShieldLabs links farmed accounts back to the same visitor and user through device fingerprinting, risk signals, and multi-accounting detected as a High-Risk Event.

Online casinos and operators detect multiple accounts by combining identity and risk signals into one persistent view of each player, then correlating the accounts that resolve to the same person. No single signal is enough, so they layer several together:

• Device fingerprinting that holds across sessions, cleared cookies, and incognito.
• Anonymizer detection for VPN, proxy, Tor, and anti-detect browser traffic, plus IP reputation.
• Multi-accounting detection, which links the many accounts behind most bonus abuse before payouts go out.

Layered together, these signals link farmed accounts back to one player even when each account uses a different email, IP, or browser.

Bonus abuse usually breaches an operator's terms of service rather than criminal law. Criminal prosecution is rare unless stolen identities or stolen payment methods are involved.

• Terms-of-service breach (most cases): void winnings, close accounts, and refuse withdrawals under the promotion's own rules.
• Criminal territory: stolen identities or payment methods can escalate a case beyond an operator's terms.
• Jurisdiction-specific: in some gambling markets, the local regulator may also weigh in.

ShieldLabs gives operators the evidence to enforce their terms, with persistent visitor and user identification, risk signals, and High-Risk Events such as multi-accounting.

ShieldLabs returns persistent visitor and user identification with a 0–100 Risk Score on every signup, deposit, and bonus claim, and detects bonus abuse before any payout goes out.

• Persistent identification: the same person is recognized across cleared cookies, incognito mode, and rotated IPs.
• High-Risk Events: when one person opens a second account for a welcome bonus, ShieldLabs detects multi-accounting with Medium or High confidence.
• 300+ signals: device, OS, browser, IP, and network signals (including anti-detect browser detection, VPN, and proxy) feed the score.

ShieldLabs stops bonus abuse for operators across iGaming, fintech, crypto, and SaaS, who choose the action for each case: verification, payout hold, or block.

ShieldLabs flags risky bonus claims and helps block fraudulent and abusive traffic. It returns a Risk Score, a full Details breakdown and High-Risk Events, and you choose the action for each claim.

• Trusted scores (0-29): credit the bonus normally with no added friction for real customers.
• Suspicious scores (30-59): require additional verification before crediting the bonus.
• Dangerous scores (60-100): hold the payout for manual review.

ShieldLabs includes 5,000 free identifications, so you can see the results on your own traffic first.