Fraud-Proofing Your Referral Program with Mariana Doncel
Mon Dec 15 2025
What happens when your referral program participants are literally trained to find holes in systems? How do you protect your program without making it so complicated that nobody wants to use it?
To explore this, we welcome Mariana Doncel to The Advocacy Channel. Mariana leads B2C product marketing at Hack the Box, a cybersecurity training platform where users learn ethical hacking through hands-on challenges. When your customers spend their days breaking into systems for fun, you learn pretty quickly what actually works for fraud prevention.
In this episode, Mariana and host Will Fraser get into the reality of protecting your referral program from abuse. Spoiler: it's not about building an airtight system with rules for every scenario. Mariana shares the pragmatic approach Hack the Box has taken, focusing on damage control and smart incentive design rather than trying to prevent every possible exploit.
In this episode, Mariana walks us through:
Why trying to close every possible loophole often backfires by making your program too complex for legitimate users
The "accept and mitigate" approach: acknowledging that some people will try to game the system while capping your exposure
How tying rewards to actual monetary actions creates natural fraud deterrence
Setting per-person limits so even if someone does find a workaround, the damage is contained
Thinking about fraud prevention as risk analysis rather than absolute protection
How to balance moving fast with protecting your program from abuse
Mariana also shares how this mindset extends beyond referral programs to everything her marketing team puts out at Hack the Box, where every campaign has to account for users who will look for alternative interpretations.
Connect with Mariana on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marianadoncel/
Connect with us:
Get more customer marketing insights and strategies at impact.com/blog/
Connect with host Will on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/wifraser/
Have a question? Suggestion? Email us at advocacychannel@impact.com
Loving this show? Explore impact.com's other podcasts packed with insights:
The Partnership Economy
The Publisher's Playbook
More
What happens when your referral program participants are literally trained to find holes in systems? How do you protect your program without making it so complicated that nobody wants to use it? To explore this, we welcome Mariana Doncel to The Advocacy Channel. Mariana leads B2C product marketing at Hack the Box, a cybersecurity training platform where users learn ethical hacking through hands-on challenges. When your customers spend their days breaking into systems for fun, you learn pretty quickly what actually works for fraud prevention. In this episode, Mariana and host Will Fraser get into the reality of protecting your referral program from abuse. Spoiler: it's not about building an airtight system with rules for every scenario. Mariana shares the pragmatic approach Hack the Box has taken, focusing on damage control and smart incentive design rather than trying to prevent every possible exploit. In this episode, Mariana walks us through: Why trying to close every possible loophole often backfires by making your program too complex for legitimate users The "accept and mitigate" approach: acknowledging that some people will try to game the system while capping your exposure How tying rewards to actual monetary actions creates natural fraud deterrence Setting per-person limits so even if someone does find a workaround, the damage is contained Thinking about fraud prevention as risk analysis rather than absolute protection How to balance moving fast with protecting your program from abuse Mariana also shares how this mindset extends beyond referral programs to everything her marketing team puts out at Hack the Box, where every campaign has to account for users who will look for alternative interpretations. Connect with Mariana on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marianadoncel/ Connect with us: Get more customer marketing insights and strategies at impact.com/blog/ Connect with host Will on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/wifraser/ Have a question? Suggestion? Email us at advocacychannel@impact.com Loving this show? Explore impact.com's other podcasts packed with insights: The Partnership Economy The Publisher's Playbook