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What happens if someone submits filler compensation data?

Salary Confidential runs automated checks of data quality on each individual survey submission before benchmark data is released. These checks currently run on employee surveys only.

These checks exist to protect both the quality of the published reports and the people paying to create them. We want high-quality reports, and we don't want data owners to pay for bad data.

If a response does not pass our automated quality check:

  • It is excluded from benchmark calculations.
  • It does not count toward the survey’s publishable response total.
  • It does not consume one of your purchased response slots.
  • Organization-sponsored surveys are not billed for excluded responses.

For example, if you purchased a five-response survey and two participants submit compensation information that is clearly unsuitable for publication, those responses are excluded. Your survey simply remains open until five publishable responses have been collected.

Likewise, if an organization invites its members to a benchmark hub, responses that do not pass our automated checks are excluded before benchmark reports are generated and are not included in billable response counts.

Why doesn’t Salary Confidential reject unusable submissions immediately?

Because doing so would teach bad-faith participants how to avoid detection.

Instead, Salary Confidential intentionally separates submission from publication.

Every response is accepted, stored, and consumes its invitation token before publication quality is evaluated. This prevents participants from repeatedly modifying and resubmitting compensation data until they discover what passes our validation.

Instead, we run our automated quality checks before Salary Confidential publishes any benchmark information, whether as a partial results release or as the final report for a closing survey. This prevents unsuitable submissions from appearing in published reports, being billed to organizations, or consuming purchased response slots in prepaid surveys.

What are the criteria of the automated checks?

The evaluation is intentionally conservative and combines both general publication-quality rules and survey-specific validation rules. Together, these checks help ensure that published benchmarks are built from high-quality responses.

To preserve the integrity of the platform, Salary Confidential does not publish the detailed criteria or methodology used during automated quality evaluation.

Does this apply to freelancer pricing surveys?

Not yet.

At this time, these automated response quality checks apply only to employee compensation surveys.

If you believe your freelancer pricing survey contains responses that are clearly unsuitable for publication, please contact Salary Confidential Support. We’ll review the survey and ensure you’re not paying for responses that don’t belong in your benchmark.

Can I disable publication quality evaluation?

No.

Publication quality evaluation is part of Salary Confidential’s benchmark methodology. It protects benchmark quality and purchased survey capacity, and cannot be disabled for individual surveys or organizations.

Is this the same as ballot stuffing protection?

No.

The automated quality checks we run on individual responses determine whether each response is suitable for inclusion in the published benchmark based on its content.

This is separate from Salary Confidential’s ballot stuffing and Sybil attack protections, which focus on detecting multiple submissions originating from the same participant or coordinated attempts to influence survey results.

Updated July 2, 2026