We’re excited to introduce a new feature that makes our quality protection more visible: a Spam Counter, which indicates how many spammers, bots, and AIs we’re automatically blocking on your behalf.
This counter shows you exactly how many participants QualityGuard© has caught and blocked before they could enter your survey.
Why We’re Adding This
Every recruitment platform deals with people trying to game the system, whether through AI-generated responses, automated bots, or manual spam tactics.. Unfortunately, that’s just how the internet works: wherever there’s an incentive to earn, there will always be people trying to game the system.
What makes the difference is how platforms handle it. We’re adding this feature to give you greater visibility into what’s happening behind the scenes.
What the Counter Shows You
When you view your Run dashboard, you’ll now see a counter displaying how many participant attempts were blocked by our QualityGuard© system before entering your survey. These are NOT included in your completions (and you are not charged for spammers that are blocked).
Those blocked include:
- Bot accounts that tried to access your study
- Participants flagged for suspicious behavior patterns
- AI-generated responses
- Duplicate accounts that tried to participate multiple times in the same study when the requester doesn’t allow it
To protect your data quality, those who are blocked don’t make it into your study or survey.
This Is Good News, Not Bad News
When you see this counter showing blocked attempts, that’s actually a positive sign, it means our systems are working to protect your research.
A high block count doesn’t mean your study is particularly vulnerable. It means:
- QualityGuard© is actively monitoring and working to protect your research
- Bad actors are being caught before wasting your budget
- The system is filtering out threats to help maintain research integrity
- Our detection is working as designed
Think of it like an email spam filter. You don’t worry when you see “342 spam emails blocked this month”, you’re glad the filter is working. This counter serves the same purpose.
Why This Matters
We believe showing you these numbers is helpful because transparency builds trust. While no platform can guarantee 100% spam-free data, we want you to see the active work happening behind the scenes to help protect your research quality.
What This Means for Your Research
You can launch studies knowing that:
- QualityGuard© is actively monitoring every participant
- It uses 8 different methods to stop fraudulent participants and inattentive participants before they can affect your data
- You have visibility into how the protection is working
- Our system works hard to help prevent you from paying for spam responses
No system is perfect at eliminating all spam, but we’ve made major efforts to eliminate as much of it as we can identify. With this new spam counter, you can see it happening in real-time.
Available Now
The Spam Counter is now live on your Run dashboards. You’ll see it alongside your other Run metrics, giving you a complete picture of your recruitment process.
If you have questions about what you’re seeing or want to understand the numbers better, our support team is always here to help explain.
