Originally Posted by Robbie

Here are a few more:
1. The never ending pop-ups that used to shut down the surfers machine when it ate up all the RAM in your computer and you couldn't stop it. 90+% of sponsors were using them. And in 2000 the average "bad ass" computer had a max of about 500 megs of RAM Basically destroyed banner advertising for years.

2. Geo-redirection of affiliate links. Boy that one was tricky! European webmasters are just now starting to really come into their own. But back then, most U.S. webmasters didn't have a way to know what was going on. Fortunately for me at the time, I had European link trade partners who clued me in on what was happening with my traffic when I sent it to one program...they would geo-ip direct it to another program in different countries WITHOUT me getting any credit of course.

3. Dialers... THE biggest and hardest hitting scam of all times. Nothing comes close. Surfer merely opened up a website and BOOM! An installer loaded on their machine without their knowledge, and disconnected them from their dial up. Then it reconnected them to a NEW dial up. And the new one was charging them 5 to 10 dollars a MINUTE to surf! They didn't have to buy anything, and had NO chance to "cancel" anything. And didn't even know it was happening until the end of the month and after they had lost THOUSANDS of dollars.

And the funny thing is? Everybody that was around at that time either knowingly or unknowingly promoted and/or sent traffic to all of the above.

And the industry is still here. And many of us still make more money each year.