kickbacks.dev

FAQ & Fraud Ground Rules

How earnings work, and the rules that keep every payout honest.

Last updated: June 18, 2026

Kickbacks pays real developers a share of ad revenue for sponsored lines shown in supported coding-assistant surfaces. That only works if the impressions are real. This page explains how earnings are calculated and the ground rules our fraud systems enforce, so honest users get paid and fake traffic does not.

1. How do I earn?

Install the VS Code extension, sign in with Google, GitHub, or Apple, accept the current terms in-editor, and keep coding as normal. When Kickbacks renders an eligible sponsored line in a supported surface, your account accrues the developer share for credited impressions and clicks.

The current developer share is 70% of net ad revenue for the eligible delivery attributed to your account. Net ad revenue and the current crediting mechanics are defined in the terms; the dashboard also reads the live share from the backend so product copy does not drift.

Which editors and assistants are supported?

Kickbacks currently supports these surfaces:

Unsupported assistants and future integrations are not billable until they are explicitly shipped by Kickbacks.

2. What counts as a real impression?

An impression earns only when all of the following are true:

Clicks are credited separately. Advertisers are billed for a click as 50 impressions, and the credited developer share follows the same net-revenue rules.

3. When do I get paid?

Earnings accrue to your Kickbacks balance as eligible events are credited. Cashouts are self-serve from the payout portal once your payable balance is at least $10.00.

Payout setup and transfers run through Stripe. When you start onboarding, Kickbacks creates or reuses a connected Stripe account for one of the payout countries currently enabled on our Connect path — United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Switzerland, and EEA countries unless the live portal shows a narrower rollout — and sends you to Stripe-hosted onboarding. Your bank and identity details go to Stripe; Kickbacks stores the Stripe account identifier, payout country, and payout history, as described in the privacy policy.

Cashout transfers move the full payable whole-cent balance to your enabled Stripe account. If Stripe onboarding is incomplete, your account is not payout-enabled, your balance is below the minimum, your country is not enabled on the current Connect path, or a Stripe upstream error occurs, the portal shows the reason and your balance remains available for a later cashout.

4. Fraud ground rules

These are the lines that, if crossed, make activity non-billable and can get an account blocked. They protect real developers and prevent advertisers from paying for fake delivery.

The enforceable terms are in For developers and Fraud and enforcement.

5. How fraud detection works

Kickbacks uses server-side validation, idempotency, cooldown gates, serving tokens, campaign accounting, and manual review to separate real delivery from abuse. We look at the shape and validity of ad events, not the content of your code or AI conversations.

We do not publish exact thresholds, review signals, or enforcement windows. Publishing those details would make the system easier to game. Normal coding behavior should not require special tuning or repeated manual action from you.

If an event fails validation or appears synthetic, it may be ignored, withheld, reversed, or routed to review. Metrics with unknown top-level fields are rejected; only the extension’s documented ext object is free-form.

6. What happens if an account is flagged

Depending on confidence and severity, Kickbacks may withhold payouts, reverse credits, pause ad serving, or terminate an account. A blocked account stops earning, and credits tied to abusive activity can be voided. Where withheld funds are later determined legitimate, they are released.

See the terms on fraud and enforcement for the controlling language.

7. What we collect (and never do)

Kickbacks collects the data needed to serve ads, credit developers, bill advertisers, operate payouts, and prevent abuse. That includes account data from provider sign-in, ad identifiers, campaign identifiers, serving tokens, event types, one-time event nonces, visibility timing, a random per-install device identifier, extension/host versions, and basic environment information such as operating system, CPU architecture, and editor name.

Kickbacks does not collect your source code, file contents, prompts, AI conversations, keystrokes, or browsing activity. See what we never collect and ad measurement events in the privacy policy.

8. Advertisers & refunds

Advertisers buy prepaid blocks of 1,000 credited five-second impressions through Stripe Checkout and bid for placement priority. Higher bids serve first; clicks are billed as 50 impressions against the campaign balance.

Served impressions are final. Unserved blocks on a campaign an advertiser pauses or cancels are refundable on request within 90 days of purchase, and unconsumed impressions on pulled campaigns may be refunded at Kickbacks’ discretion. If delivery is later determined fraudulent or invalid, Kickbacks may issue credits or refunds and may reverse associated developer credits. See For advertisers.

9. Appeals & contact

If you believe your account was flagged in error, contact us and a human will review it in good faith. Include the sign-in email on your Kickbacks account and any context that helps us distinguish normal development from synthetic activity.

Support and appeals: support@kickbacks.dev
Privacy requests: privacy@kickbacks.dev
Legal questions: legal@kickbacks.dev
Advertiser support: ads@kickbacks.dev