# Exclude self-referrals
## What is self-referrals
When your affiliates promote your store, they can use several types of tracking methods such as affiliate links or affiliate coupons. The orders made by customers with the use of those methods are called **Referral orders**, or **Referrals** for short. On the other hand, if the affiliates make the orders themselves using their own links or coupons, such orders are considered **Self-referrals**.
## Exclude self-referrals
Commonly, merchants don't want to give commissions to affiliates when they make the orders themselves due to concerns over costs, profit maximization, fraud prevention, tracking accuracy, and maintaining fairness within the affiliate program. In such cases, you can make use of our feature **Exclude self-referrals**. By turning it on for a program, all affiliates in it will no longer get commissions for **Self-referrals**. Such orders will not even show up in **UpPromote > Referrals** like regular referrals.
To enable it, simply go to **Programs** > click on the program's name > **Advance** > switch on **Exclude self-referrals**.
{% hint style="warning" %}
**Note:** The system will detect the self-referrals using the customer's email address. If the customer's email address matches the affiliate's email address in a referral order, it will be considered a self-referral.
{% endhint %}
Consequently, there will be cases in which affiliates use a different email address to make self-referral orders. UpPromote's system will not be able to detect such cases. If you notice one, you can manually deny that referral order by going to **Referrals** > Locate it > **Deny** (or **Undo > Deny** in case the referral has been approved already).
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