Facebook has more than 3 billion users and still holds its position as the leading traffic source in the world. Affiliate marketers and e-commerce advertisers understand just how powerful Facebook can be for promoting deals and offers. But as more advertisers join the platform, Facebook has tightened its ad policies—a common evolution for ad networks that grow too large and must comply with stricter regulations to avoid legal consequences.

Facebook’s ad rules are very strict. You can’t make bold claims, and certain verticals are outright banned. These include iGaming, dating, crypto, finance, tobacco, adult, short-term loans, and nutra, among others.

Despite these restrictions, many advertisers still find Facebook’s vast audience too tempting to ignore. To promote offers in restricted categories, one of the most effective tactics they use is cloaking.

What Is Cloaking?

By definition, cloaking means to disguise or hide something. As explained by Facebook in this official statement:

“Cloaking is a malicious technique that impairs ad review systems by concealing the nature of the website linked to an ad. When ads are cloaked, a company’s ad review system may see a website showing an innocuous product such as a sweater, but a user will see a different website, promoting deceptive products and services which, in many cases, are not allowed.”

In online marketing, cloaking is typically used in two ways:

1. Link Shortening

This is the more common, white-hat method. Marketers “beautify” long, ugly URLs to make them more appealing to users and protect affiliate links from being hijacked. This method is widely accepted and often used by legitimate businesses.

2. URL Masking

This is the more advanced and widely used cloaking technique in gray or blackhat marketing. It involves intentionally showing Facebook moderators a compliant “white page,” while real users are redirected to the actual “target page” that contains the restricted offer.

How Does Cloaking Work?

Cloaking works by running detection scripts on a web server that analyze each incoming visit. When someone clicks on a cloaked ad, the script determines whether the visitor is a real user or a Facebook moderator. If the system identifies a moderator—based on IP address, user agent, or other signals—it displays a clean, policy-compliant landing page (often called a “white page”). If the visitor is a regular user, they’re seamlessly redirected to the actual offer page, which may contain restricted or non-compliant content.

Cloaking systems determine the visitor type through two key methods:

IP Address Filtering

Cloaking platforms maintain large databases of blacklisted IP addresses known to belong to moderators or bots.

User Agent Detection

Scripts analyze user agent strings to detect if the request is coming from known ad reviewers. While user agents can be faked, IP addresses are much harder to mask, making IP filtering the most reliable method.

With AI now being used in moderation, cloaking is becoming increasingly difficult. Moderators may even disguise themselves as regular users, but cloaking tools are evolving just as rapidly.

Fortunately, you no longer need to build everything from scratch. There are ready-made tools and services that provide updated IP and user agent databases, making it easier than ever to implement effective cloaking.

Three Types of Cloaking

White Hat Cloaking

Used to segment traffic by location, device type, or interests. White hat cloaking doesn’t deceive moderators—both bots and users see the same content. It’s often used to block bots or unwanted GEOs, and is considered safe and compliant.

Gray Hat Cloaking

Not illegal, but goes against platform guidelines. A common SEO example is showing keyword-stuffed content to search engines while users see a readable article. It’s manipulative and can lead to penalties, but it doesn’t involve outright deception.

Black Hat Cloaking

This involves tricking Facebook into approving ads that promote restricted content (e.g., gambling, crypto, adult). Reviewers see a clean page, while users are redirected to the real, non-compliant offer. Some advertisers also use “white washing” techniques—designing the ad to look compliant but switching content post-approval.

Step-by-Step Guide to Cloaking Facebook Ads

To cloak your Facebook ads, you first need to either farm or buy Facebook assets such as Facebook profiles, Business Managers (BMs), and pages. Even if you buy assets, you still need to warm them up—because proper account nurturing is key to successful cloaking.

1. Setting Up Facebook Assets

When your intention is to cloak ads, your Facebook asset setup needs to be on point. Most advertisers prefer to purchase ready-made profiles, BMs, and pages to avoid time-consuming tasks that don’t directly drive revenue.

2. Setting Up Profiles (Day 1-7)

If you’re registering a new profile, start by nurturing the account through real-looking activity for at least a week. This includes making posts, engaging with others, adding friends, uploading a profile picture, and more. Nurturing accounts also means you should sometimes log out of the account, log back in and interact more. Make sure you do this process for a minimum time of 7 days. Find detailed warm-up guide from our article: How to warm up Facebook accounts for advertising?

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If you're buying a profile, you’ll need to use an ISP proxy from the same location where the account was originally created. This saves significant time and is more reliable. For proxies, we recommend floxy.io.

3. Setting Up the Page (Day 7-14)

Next, set up or buy a local business or community page. Make sure the page has a high-quality score. Upload at least 5–7 posts and invite friends to like the page. For increasing likes, Socialplug.io offers excellent services.

4. Running Warm-Up Ads (Day 14-18)

This step is where you start running ads to establish ad account trust. And the step where you will create or buy a business manager.

• First Campaign – Page Likes: Your first campaign should focus on gaining page likes. Spend around $10-$30 per day for at least 2 days.
  
  
• Second Campaign – Engagement: Launch an engagement campaign for post interactions (desktop only), but do not include any links to the target URL. Spend around $10-$30 here as well over the 2 day period.
  
  

Extra Tip: Matching your credit card ZIP code with the IP location of your proxy gets you the highest success rate.

5. Setting Up the Cloaking Infrastructure (Day 18-19)

Before launching your third campaign, you need to create your whitepage and install cloaking scripts on your offer page. Several tools can help here:

• trafficgate.app – for generating whitepages
  
  
• cloaking.house – for cloaking scripts
  
  

Watch this step-by-step tutorial on setting up cloaking scripts using cloaking.house.

6. Test your creative as a post (Day 19-20)

This is a great way to see if your creatives can pass a moderation. Make sure you still don’t post any links. If everything succeeds, the ad can be uploaded to ads manager and you can start the campaign.

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7. Launching the Offer Campaign (Day 20-...)

The third campaign is your actual offer campaign, which you'll run once all previous steps are done correctly

Pro Tip: If you're looking to significantly reduce your ban rates and get direct support from Meta, consider using agency ad accounts. Uproas.io offers agency-grade ad accounts with unlimited spend from day one. As long as you have a profile, Business Manager, and page, Uproas can onboard you instantly. These accounts come with higher approval rates, lower ban risks, and access to Meta reps who can help recover banned assets in most cases. You can also request an unlimited number of ad accounts from Uproas, making it easier to scale or recover quickly when bans happen.

• Begin with a "Website Clicks" campaign using the blackhat URL, copy, and creatives.
  
  
• Initially, send $30–$40 worth of all traffic to the whitepage.
  
  
• Once the campaign starts smoothly, switch to IP filtering to redirect real users to the offer page.
  
  

By following this process, you’ll significantly increase your chances of cloaking effectively while minimizing the risk of early detection.

How Facebook Fights Cloaking

Facebook has taken legal and technical measures against cloaking. For example, on April 20, 2020, it sued LeadCloak for helping advertisers bypass its policies using deceptive software (source).

AI now plays a big role in identifying cloaked content. Facebook also monitors user behavior and collects feedback to identify problematic ads. However, this is a constant arms race—cloaking tools are evolving as fast as Facebook’s detection systems.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should you use cloaking on Facebook?

Cloaking is a high-risk, high-reward strategy. If you’re running in restricted verticals like crypto, gambling, or nutra, cloaking might be the only way to access Facebook’s enormous traffic potential. However, your assets can get banned at any time, and Meta takes enforcement seriously. Only use cloaking if you’re comfortable with the risks and have the infrastructure to handle account bans and scaling rapidly.

Do I need a technical background to set up cloaking?

No, not anymore. Modern cloaking tools like cloaking.house and trafficgate.app have simplified the process. They offer user-friendly interfaces and tutorials, eliminating the need for custom coding, server setup, or manual IP filtering. As long as you follow the step-by-step instructions and have basic marketing knowledge, you can set up cloaking effectively.

Are there any other benefits to cloaking?

Yes, beyond bypassing moderation, cloaking offers several advantages:

• Filters Unwanted Traffic: Blocks VPN users, bots, and spy tools—saving your ad budget.
  
  
• Protects Ad Spend: Ensures only your intended audience sees the ad, reducing wasted clicks.
  
  
• Secures Your Content: Hides your landing page’s structure, protecting creatives from theft.
  
  
• Blocks Spy Tools: Deceives competitor spying and scraping services with fake content.