Patent ID: 8706551

Claim:
A method performed by one or more server devices, the method comprising: providing, by one or more processors associated with the one or more server devices, a secret key to an advertiser; receiving, from the advertiser, a request associated with a conversion, the conversion being defined by the advertiser as one of one or more particular user actions; sending, to the advertiser, information comprising a first identifier and a first hash value computed using the secret key; receiving, from at least one client device, a plurality of conversion requests; generating, by the one or more processors, a conversion event message based on each conversion request of the plurality of conversion requests, each conversion event message comprising a second identifier and a second hash value computed using the secret key; matching, by the one or more processors, the first identifier with the second identifier, and the first hash value with the second hash value; detecting, by the one or more processors, at least one of the plurality of conversion requests as at least one valid conversion corresponding to a user action, based on the first identifier matching the second identifier and based on the first hash value matching the second hash value; detecting, by the one or more processors, at least one of the plurality of conversion requests as at least one invalid conversion corresponding to a user action when at least one of: the first identifier does not match the second identifier, or the first hash value does not match the second hash value; generating, by the one or more processors and in response to detecting that at least one of the plurality of conversion requests is at least one valid conversion and at least one of the plurality of conversion requests is at least one invalid conversion, one or more reports that include statistics for the advertiser based on each of the conversion requests, including the at least one valid conversion request and the at least one invalid conversion request, related to at least one advertisement of the advertiser; and providing, by the one or more processors, the one or more reports to the advertiser.