An affiliate is a stranger selling in your name, and the name is what gets fined. The FTC holds an advertiser liable for what its endorsers say and expects it to monitor them; the company whose product an email promotes can be held responsible for that email; and the card networks hold the acquirer answerable for the merchants it lets in. Every one of those obligations runs through this list.

The network’s own export, read — never tracked. A conversion is credited only if, on the day it happened, the affiliate was approved, the source was permitted, the buyer was somewhere you sell, and the creative was one you had approved. Asked as of that day, not this one: a source banned last month does not reach back and take away a sale from the spring.