Fake Email Click Throughs

[tomb956]

Issue: In comparing 20 Email campaigns sent, each with 5 clickable links, it is determined that the same exact recipients are opening and clicking through on each link in the email. What is the best way to determine which is a BOT click through and which is a human click through? We are thinking a human click through is 1 or 2 click throughs on an email with 5 or more clickable links. Thoughts?

[William_A]

Hello @tomb956 ,

If their network or email program uses some kind of security tool that "opens" emails and "clicks" their links to check for malware, it can result in that kind of data. In all honesty, the only suggestion I'd have is to swap your authentication to self-authentication since you have your own domain, especially if you're going to be predominantly sending to internal (same domain) email addresses. Ideally, this would show the security algorithms that emails being sent through us by you are effectively coming directly from you, and avoid triggering the clicks/opens from bots. 

Beyond that, there's not much else you can do from your end. Our devs are constantly trying to identify the various programs that utilize this functionality, so they can set our system to ignore the behavior and triggers from these particular programs. If, after setting your account up for self-auth, the click rates continue to be inflated or worsen, then it may be worth calling in. That way our general support or higher level technical team can see if there's any further info that can be gleamed from the content of the emails with you live on the phone, or to see if the domains of the contacts that are seeming to bot-click them show any other particular consistencies we can track.

[KenS93]

Is not Constant Contact able to look at the User_Agents of all the clicks to readily flag or filter out the security programs.  Or is it that the security tools actually pose as real users as well? Per the constant contact knowledgebase article: https://knowledgebase.constantcontact.com/email-digital-marketing/articles/KnowledgeBase/39841-Track...