I just lost 80$ on Shopify app store ads in a matter of minutes.
Can we all agree that 80 clicks over 86 impressions is an abuse?
How can we protect ourselves from clicks coming from bots and how can we report such abuse?
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welp, time to stop my ads
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@Rocco_Ghielmini, have you talked to Shopify support yet?
If not, I’d highly encourage you to. Looks like we’ve got a very creative “entrepreneur” in the loyalty niche who could really use a suspension.
I’ve just submitted my reports — since Friday (November 8), we’ve been getting an absolutely unreasonable number of clicks in the same niche.
And the best part? When I lower the bids, the clicks go up, not down — until the campaign hits its daily limit, of course.
Let’s just hope Shopify’s paying attention. Otherwise, pretty soon there won’t be anyone left willing to pay for ads in the app store.
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@Katherine_Stepanova I tried to get in touch through Shopify support but I was receiving answers which looked absolutely AI generated, although when I asked, I was told I was talking to a real person (which seems to have that same “You are absolutely right!“ type of answers, just like Claude Sonnet 4.5).
Anyway, I was told the issue has been escalated, but to submit a “Report a violation“ form, and that I would hear back from that team. Soon after I received an email that reads:
Hi there,
For help with general Partner Account inquiries, we encourage you to reach out to Shopify Support. You can get in touch with Shopify Support through our Help Center.
Shopify Partner Governance
So I am just being sent back and forth 
We were also affected by this. A spike in clicks on 11/10. Not exactly in the loyalty niche, but maybe tangential. In the past, I have received credits from what Shopify deems fraudulent activity. But I can’t remember that happening in the recent past.
Hi folks,
Thanks for flagging this, we’re investigating this and I’d also encourage affected partners to contact support directly to pass on specific app details which will help this investigation.
Hi Liam,
Thanks for looking into this. I have to say though, I just received a pretty frustrating response from support:
“Our team has responded and provided this link where you can report such incidents via the Report a Partner Violation form for further investigation.”
The issue is that the form assumes we already know which specific partner we’re reporting — but that’s information only Shopify can identify. We have no visibility into the actual click sources.
On top of that, based on what I’ve seen in the community, it seems no one has ever received a follow-up after submitting this form.
At this point, we’re effectively paying Shopify for fraudulent clicks. I’d prefer not to just submit a generic form with no response - I’d expect that the money spent on these fraudulent clicks will be refunded and that the party responsible will be identified and penalized.
Thanks!
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DMing you for details @Katherine_Stepanova
Thanks @Liam-Shopify Can you send details to me too please? I got the same frustrating response.
Hi Liam,
Just wanted to let you know that we’re still seeing the same spam clicks. They stopped yesterday for a bit, but now it’s only 10 AM in my time zone, and our entire category budget has already been used up.
I’m having to switch off the campaigns — which, unfortunately, seems to be exactly what this fraudulent activity is aiming for. I really hope you’ll be able to provide a proper solution soon.
Can you maybe at least let us run ads for logged-in customers only, like BFS apps do? Otherwise, the whole ads system becomes practically unusable — not just for us, but eventually for anyone. Anyone can just drain competitors’ budgets through spam clicks.
Best,
Katherine
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It happened again, and again with the loyalty keyword. This time they got smarter and did not send all clicks from the united states but from a handful of countries.
I will have to turn off the ads now. I’m expecting a refund, though.
Hey folks,
We’re still investigating this - appreciate your patience here while this investigation is ongoing. I may connect with folks here via DM or request you contact support for authenticated connections.
Update: I was given 20$ ad credit for false clicks btw Nov 1 and Nov 20. Total lost in that period from false clicks I could document is at least $100.
UPDATE: I got the missing 80$ back.
We saw about $100 returned out of roughly $300 in fraudulent clicks. But the bigger issue is that we were told there’s still no solution in place. Which means that if we enable our campaigns again, we’ll likely face another wave of fake clicks.
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Hey folks - we shipped an update to prevent fraudulent clicks that matched the recent pattern that was reported.
If there are additional charges that should be returned, please connect with Shopify Support again and share this post with them, requesting that this issue is escalated to our billing team.
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