Guard Every Survey Response.
The market research industry’s most advanced fraud detection platform. 15+ detection layers, real-time ML scoring, 95%+ accuracy, and less than 1% false positives.
95%+
ML Detection Accuracy
<1%
False Positive Rate
<200ms
Green Lane Response
10K+
Requests / min
15+
Detection Methods
Every respondent is screened at the entry point — clean ones pass, fraud is stopped before it touches your data.
Fraud Has Nowhere Left to Hide
Eight simultaneous detection layers analyze 100+ risk factors per session — from hardware fingerprints to natural hand tremor physics.
Hardware Layer
Device fingerprinting via WebGL, canvas hash, CPU, screen, and memory. Detects VMs (VMware, VirtualBox, QEMU, Xen) and headless browsers with a +50 risk penalty each.
SHA-256 device IDs · Cross-browser tracking
Behavioral Layer
Mouse physics, keystroke dynamics, touch biometrics, and engagement analytics. Detects bots via velocity variance, tremor energy (5–12Hz), and movement entropy scoring.
12 behavioral features · Fitts’ Law analysis
Network Layer
IP intelligence via GeoLite2, ISP reputation scoring, VPN/proxy detection, datacenter blocking, and timezone mismatch analysis across 20+ cloud providers.
ASN lookup · Timezone delta scoring
Text Layer
ONNX neural model detects gibberish, AI-generated content, copy-paste behavior, and low-relevance responses via semantic and stylistic analysis.
AI content detection · Relevance scoring
Identity Layer
Email and phone reputation via hash-based lookup. Disposable email detection, phone carrier analysis, and digital footprint risk assessment — zero PII stored.
Hash-only · No PII
Pattern Layer
Redis-backed cross-device linking, duplicate detection within 24h, burst monitoring, and global Three Strikes reputation tracking across all agencies.
Cross-agency blacklist · Burst alerts
Security Layer
Invisible honeypot fields — immediate BLOCK on violation. Detects Selenium, Puppeteer, and Playwright via CDP checks, navigator.webdriver, and timing anomalies.
Honeypot → Instant BLOCK
ML Layer
Isolation Forest anomaly detection trained on your agency’s own traffic. Self-calibrates through Learning → Calibrating → Production. No labeled data ever needed.
Unsupervised · Continuously adapts
Six Verdicts. Zero Ambiguity.
Every session receives a unified risk score (0–100) and one of six actionable verdicts — delivered in under 200ms for 80% of traffic.
Allow
Score 0–29
All checks passed. Zero friction for legitimate respondents.
Flag
Score 30–59
Suspicious patterns detected. Manual review recommended.
Challenge
Score 60–79
Additional verification required before proceeding.
Block
Score 80–89
High-risk respondent blocked from survey access.
Ghost
Score 90–100
Professional fraudster silently fed a decoy survey.
Review
Behavioral anomaly
Hardware passed but behavior warrants human review.
Behavioral Science Meets Fraud Detection
Humans move, type, and touch in ways bots cannot replicate. SurveyGuard measures the precise physics of human interaction.
Mouse Physics Analysis
Velocity variance, acceleration jerk, curvature sum, sample entropy, and Fitts’ Law compliance. Detects teleportation, mechanical linearity (>0.95), and absence of 5–12Hz hand tremor energy.
Hardware Fingerprinting
Screen, CPU, WebGL renderer, canvas hash, device memory, and platform combined into a deterministic SHA-256 device ID. Stable across incognito, cookie clearing, and browser switches.
Keystroke Dynamics
Flight time variance, dwell time patterns, typing calibration for fast/slow/mobile users, and paste detection. Flags <5% timing variance and zero-backspace perfect entry as bot signals.
VM & Automation Detection
Identifies SwiftShader, VMware, VirtualBox, QEMU, and Xen via WebGL strings (+50 risk each). Detects Selenium, Puppeteer, and Playwright via API checks and headless signatures.
Touch Biometrics
Pressure variance, contact area analysis, and gesture patterns for mobile respondents. Spoofed touch events trigger an immediate BLOCK with +50 risk penalty.
IP & Geolocation Intelligence
GeoLite2-powered ASN, country, city, and timezone lookup. Blocks 20+ cloud/hosting providers and flags timezone mismatches >2 hours as VPN/proxy indicators.
Engagement Analytics
Tab visibility tracking, attention scoring, session duration, and time-to-first-interaction. Sessions under 10 seconds or with zero interaction receive +20–25 risk.
Text Quality Scoring
ONNX neural model flags gibberish (+30 risk), AI-generated content (+40–60 risk), and copy-paste patterns. Works client-side, server-side, or in hybrid mode.
Ghost Protocol™
Professional fraudsters know when they’re blocked — so we don’t tell them. Ghost Protocol silently routes the most dangerous bad actors into a convincing decoy survey.
Silent Redirection
Risk scores 90–100 trigger a seamless redirect to a fake survey. The fraudster never learns they’ve been caught — eliminating retaliation, account switching, and repeat attempts.
Intelligence Collection
While fraudsters “complete” the decoy, SurveyGuard collects additional device and behavioral signals to strengthen the global blacklist and improve future detection.
Cross-Agency Protection
Ghost-flagged profiles feed into the global reputation system, instantly protecting every SurveyGuard client from the same professional fraud networks.
AI That Learns Your Traffic
Isolation Forest unsupervised learning — trained on your agency’s own normal traffic. No labeled data needed. Continuously adapts to new fraud tactics.
The model analyzes 12 behavioral and hardware features per session, mapping each to an anomaly score then a risk value of 0–100.
- 01Mouse linearity score
- 02Keystroke flight time avg.
- 03Typing relative variance
- 04Session duration
- 05Paste count
- 06Browser entropy
- 07Movement entropy
- 08Tremor energy (5–12Hz)
- 09Tremor score (0–1)
- 10Max acceleration
- 11Mean jerk
- 12Curvature sum
Isolation Forest Model
Trains automatically on normal traffic patterns. Once calibrated, switches to full ML predictions — no manual intervention required. Handles high-dimensional features and continuously adapts to evolving fraud tactics.
Global Reputation & IP Defence
Cross-agency fraud tracking, datacenter blocking, and timezone-aware geolocation create a perimeter professional fraud farms cannot penetrate.
IP Intelligence
- GeoLite2 city, ASN, and country lookup
- Blocks 20+ cloud/hosting providers (AWS, GCP, Azure, DigitalOcean…)
- VPN/proxy pattern matching on ISP name
- Bad ISP → immediate BLOCK (+100 risk)
- Datacenter IP → +50 risk penalty
Timezone Mismatch
- Compares browser timezone vs. IP geolocation
- >2h mismatch → +40 risk (likely VPN)
- >6h mismatch → +60 risk (probable proxy)
- >12h mismatch → +80 risk (near-certain fraud tool)
- Configurable via environment variable paths
Three Strikes System
- Cross-agency global fraud reputation database
- Strike 1: Warning + elevated monitoring
- Strike 2: Soft-blocked across all agencies
- Strike 3: Permanent global blacklist entry
- All tracking via hashes — zero PII in the system
Built for Enterprise Scale from Day One
Redis-backed caching, async processing, and dynamic friction routing ensure fraud detection never slows down legitimate respondents.
Green Lane
<200ms
80% of all traffic
Trusted respondents pass instantly. Zero friction, zero delay, zero compromise on data quality.
Yellow Lane
3–4s
Suspicious traffic
Proof-of-Work challenge adds compute cost for suspicious sessions. Humans pass with minor delay.
Red Lane
3–6s
High-risk traffic
Slider CAPTCHA for the highest-risk sessions. Most bots fail immediately; legitimate users pass in seconds.
10K+
Requests / min per agency
1,000+
Concurrent requests handled
90 days
Auto data retention & pruning
Privacy-First by Architecture
SurveyGuard never stores PII. All analysis runs on SHA-256 hashes. GDPR right-to-erasure and ISO 20252 quality standards are built in from the start.
Data Minimization
Device IDs and email/phone data stored only as SHA-256 hashes — one-way and non-reversible. IP addresses are masked in logs. No personal information touches the database in plaintext.
Multi-Tenant Agency Isolation
Full RBAC with agency-level data separation. Each agency sees only their own data, thresholds, and analytics. Shared intelligence (blacklists) operates on hashes only — complete cross-tenant privacy.
Clean Data Starts Here.
Join market research agencies using SurveyGuard to protect data quality, reduce fraud costs, and deliver better insights.
The case for catching fraud at the door
Field notes on how survey fraud actually works — and why post-hoc data cleaning is already too late.