EPASSPORTE: Why provide webmaster payouts for a toolbar company?

Do you wear a tin foil hat?

Companies such as Walmart buy advertising from all over the place. They buy tons of it. I am sure they buy newspaper ads in papers that run escort ads, but that doesn't make them a pimp (and we all know that walmart ain't pimping at all!).

Let's make this clear: What Zango's product does and what videos cash's product does it two totally different things. Not even close. We aren't talking a simple toolbar and some unfriendly popups. VC installs a rootkit. The turn machines in zombies, on to which they install new malware on a daily (if not hourly) basis. That malware doesn't pop a console, but rather entirely redirects the surfer, blocks access to anti-virus software, can steal credit card and other personal information, and can turn your computer into a botnet zombie spewing stock tip spam and no end of other bullshit.

Are you suggesting that WalMart is setting up botnets?

You better double up the tin foil.

baddog, with all due respect to michael, I have no fucking idea what his job is over there, but I suspect that he might be at least privy to a company directory that can tell him the extention to call to talk to the secretary of the person responsible to passing messages onto the personal assistant to the guy who brings the coffee in for the the department head that processes the information that might lead to a VP of something or another considering the concept. It's the closest thing we got around here. DO YOU HAVE A BETTER FUCKING IDEA?

This thread was started because of Zlob not Zango, two very different ball games. Every PC infected (are there are a FUCKING ton) with Zlob is stealing sales from you..and I'm not talking about just changing your aff. id's in talking about site, join page and get this even PROCESSOR jacking.

We have an infected PC we are using for testing this shit..I just check out trafficgigolos. Once infected 4 out of 5 clicks on any site advertising trafficgigolos does not go to trafficgigolos..get it?

The video of what these guys are doing is will be listed here soon. The shit is about to hit the fan and many people will be out of a job,

If he doesnt understand that explaining it further is pointless.

See you can't even make a rational stance on the issue. It's ok for WalMart to advertise through Zango, but AFF can't?

So we agree that there are legitmate adware companies out there that major companies such as WalMart, Warner Bros, AFF, etc do business with? I'm not trying to defend VC or that shit in anyway. My fault for confusing the two. I understand the difference between the two. But do you?

yes i am implying that WalMart is deep into the business of botnets. if you need proxies just email [email protected]. they got https, socks4/5, whatever you need. it's pretty sweet because i can just use a WalMart giftcard to make the purchases. no more Western Union payments to Russia!

Yes, I get it. If someone is rooted there isn't much any of us can do. Consumer awareness is the only solution. Or maybe get everyone switched over to Macs.

How can you compare competitive marketing to stealing ? Do you really not know the difference between the two.

Here is an easy to understand example:

You open up a mc donalds, I open up burger king across the street from you, I offer better food, have cheaper prices and put fliers on all the cars in the neighborhood. That is called " marketing". It is legal, nothing wrong with it at all.

I walk into your mc donalds and i rip your register off of the counter and walk across the street to my store and take the money and put it in my register. thats is called stealing.

The person who is above you in google search results = the person using trojans and spyware to hijack sales ????

Not even close. It is sad that people think this way.

If we all follow these simple steps we will all be make pre spyware sales again.

1-Webmaster awareness (90% are fucking clueless, "its just a slow period", "the holidays just past, cards are full", "no problem on our end")

2-Consumer awareness

3-C&D

What you are doing is bitching at the people bitching.... kind of ironic.

If someone wants to put the spot light on a company for being a part of somethign shaddy let them. I think everyone here knows they can sue if they choose, what their options ares, etc.....

if bitching bothers you than how does you bitching about them bitching help anything ? At least they are bitching at the right people, you bitching at the person trying to do something, even if you think what he is doing is a waste of time, it is still something (more than what you doing about it).

Sorry " just learn to adapt" isn't then answer.

If i wanted to I could get a spyware company started right now. And i am sure a lot of other people could too, than the entire net would be one big cluster fuck of trojans fighting trojans, and spyware trying to one up the other spy ware company by uninstalling their shit, etc... the whole system would collapse.

Question? What are you doing to protect traffic gigolos from zango / spyware. If I went and signed up to zango and targeted all your sites and t hen hired a programmer in russia to target your sites with trojans, redirecting the traffic to whoever, and your sales got cut in half over night, what would you do....

this is totally a hypothetical, but you are preaching about not bitching and protecting yourself, maybe you can share some of you insight on how to protect yourself or adapt?

You just let it out. How much traffic do you buy from russia this way?

baddog makes me wonder sometimes too about stuff but I think he is just hardheaded. He will pick out one thing like why you mentioned michael's name and he will reply 10 times about it, forget the rest of the post, the whole topic, etc....

i can only dig myself in deeper with this argument. i'm just gonna take my own advice and let you guys keep ranting and raving.

consumer awareness is the only way this battle will ever be won. as long as that traffic is there for the taking someone will pay for it.

Now to address the rest of your drivel:

Short answer NO, long answer yes with a but.

toolbars that are installed knowingly, with FULL disclosure, and are installed knowingly without some sort of come on (like "click here for free video" or "click here to play") would be acceptable. That companies like Zango use techniques designed to softly mislead the consumer into thinking they are downloading a video or game when in fact they are downloading a "browser help object" is very much grey area.

That Zango paid a major fine because their techniques were less than on the up and up is clear indication that we are talking very close to the line, even from the standpoint of very non-technical people in the FTC.

That Zango's customer retention time on average is about 90 days should tell you how unsatisfactory thier product really is. It's FREE, and people are dumping it.

That Zango is considered spyware by most major adware companies, and normally get flagged for removal says much about it as well.

It is pretty simple: Without the (somewhat) misleading techniques used by Zango to get surfers to download their "product", nobody would knowingly install their stuff. The only thing that "browser help object" truly helps is Zango's bottom line.

Now, if the toolbar is legally installed by the end user, then yes, whatever that toolbar does in the normal course of business is up for grabs. What has yet to be determined in a court of law is actions by companies (such as AFF) to buy popups over their affiliate clicks, which interferes with the affiliate relationship and could potentially be actionable in the long run.

Now, all that to say that VC's Zlob isn't a browser help object, and it isn't like Zango, so now you can drop Zango out of the discussion entirely and get back to the point.

VC's product is reported as a rootkit, which opens up end user's PCs to multiple waves of spyware, malware, and worse. Why do you think that Epassporte should facilitate paying webmasters for sending traffic to this business?

Someone like you?

there isn't one person here who isn't losing money from this shit. So everyone who "interjects" themselves is losing money, that is a moot point. You make it sound like well this group of people are not affected they dont care and don't say anything. This group is affected so they are pissed and post about it. It affects everyone. Some people just don't give a fuck or think it is part of " doing business ". or they are clueless to the fact at how much money they are losing to it now and potentially how much worse it will get in the future. Like you said, they make a lot of money from spyware, they are greedy by nature, do you think they will stop? lol they will do more and more. Maybe losing 2%, 5% 10% of you sales doesn't get your ass flaming but at some point you will lose enough sales to spyware (if not thing is done to stop it) that you will either be fired up about it or you will be out of business.


I don't think there is one person here who i disagree with more.

So people in the porn business don't have morals and ethics high up on our lists ? WTF... where you come up with this shit, is this the way you feel personally (seems like it) or do you just think everyone is bad?

this is why most people that work with programs don't voice their opinions about these controversial topics on forums. too many idiots. you wanna spin it into me buying install traffic. you're a joke.

This is after you spent a page and half trying to spin this into "just like walmart"?

you got nailed. Deal with it.

Do you understand how public opinon works ? If not go pay a little more attention to the christian coalitions. Look what they did to the cell phone company in Canada because it was going to provide porn on it.

Public Opinion. If i dedicated my entire time to informing the public that Walmart (for example) was the cause of their PC having spyware on it and the reason why it crashed thiir pc and they had to pay to get it fixed or get a new one, if enough people were told this and complained to walmart that they were going to shop at Kmart because Kmart didn't pay for spyware advertising. I bet i could get them to stop. I could do it alone if that was all i did. But I am not a martor, just a part time bitcher. But if enough people did a little bit it would add up to a lot.

Look at Warner Bros and Zango. Enough people bitched at Warner Bros because of Zango and they stopped doing business with them. You call this bitching, but if more people made more posts on more boards, send out emails to friends instead of all that stupid chain mail and dumb jokes (more bitching right ) than the message would be loud enough and clear enough that the people who use this shit would stop. Unfortunetly AFF must have a lot of money tied into zango, but how much do you really think Walmart would miss if they stopped. I don't think you would have to scream that loud to get that one pulled. For AFF, if Sleazy, Hoes, xxx Jay, and 3 or 4 of their top 10 affiliates threatened to leave, I bet AFF would have stopped. What they lost wasn't in affiliates they felt was less than what they *think* they would lose by stop doing business with zango.

Sure spyware will just get someone to replace them, you campaign against that company till very few people want to touch them. Make a like a christian on porn We should learn at least something from those people.

please share your steps ....

How do you stop zango from hijacking your traffic, i would love to hear this one.

link, I would love to see that since zango hammered myspace's network last summer and myspace wasn't too happy about it.

I would think myspace would be the last to do business with them, surprised they didn't sue them after that.

nice can't wait to see traficgiglos reply to that.....

Traffic gigolos wants people to stop bitching, suck it up, adapt, and if you can't sue, then oh well for you.

Threads like this (bitching) gets started and apparently traffic gigolos wasn't as protected as they thought from the sounds of it. Can't wait to see the video. And to think, traffic gigolos would have likely never know what was happening to them if it wasn;t for this " bitching" thread.

i didn't spin anything. zango does business with AFF. zango does business with WalMart.

Yeah, but Will, vvq made it clear, trafficgigolos feels that this stuff is all a normal part of business and we shouldn't bitch. They shouldn't bitch if 80% of their traffic is getting lifted (and probably sold back to them at higher price, which makes it even more amusing).

I can't find it. Can you show me the WalMart affiliate program? I want to test to see if Zango overwrites their cookies...

I wonder when ePassporte is gonna come in here and post an explanation/excuse.

yes i may hate zango, but i agree with vvq, whining on a message board is getting pointless now. theres too much off it.

too many people are talking the talk, but they're not walking the walk.

they expect others (big dogs) to do things for them and its pathetic.

if you dont like epassporte doing this, dont use epassporte. simple.

zango and stuff like it will keep happening as long as its legal. the people have been made aware(through countless will threads LOL) and its time they settled down and conducted who they do business with.

i have decided i will not use zango pro sponsers. unless others dont convert better.

let the big grow, let the small die

wow i think i went a bit of the rails, what i meant to say is as long as this stuff stays legal and theres money to be made, theres little that can be done. the boards know already, its up to webmasters if they want to be greaseballs or not.

as frustrated as I am right now with epass for other reasons....

epassporte didn't make the site... if epassporte dropped them they would still payout... why single out epass here?

Here's a tip: NEVER.

ok stop using epass then I highly doubt they give a shit.

Is it illegal to do business with a company that installs malware? Unless banks stop doing businesses with those, I don't see why epass should. They're not here to make a moral or ethical choices. That's my opinion on it.

I personally hate malware and spyware but I do think it'd be a bad sign if epass started to screen who they allow to use their services and who not, until proven guilty/illegal.

Not sure what the status of videoscash is, but if it's not 'officially illegal', I don't see why epass should stop doing business with them. I would hate to work with a bank that would shut down my account according to their moral standards and ethics.

1. In legal terms, much happening on and via the internet is new. "The Law" will take decades to catch up to many issues.
2. Worse, there is no "THE" Law: every country has its own laws. Even such broadly agreed concepts as copyright protection are still treated differently, with some countries virtual havens for abusers. So what chance is there that the various forms (and future forms) of scumware will be handled consistently within the lifetime of anyone here now?

Realistically we cannot make this stuff go away, the very best we can do is force it to the sidelines. The very worst we can do - as many are doing now - is treat it as just another way of doing business. That's because legitimate competition is tough, it requires effort and imagination. Writing checks to people who will deliver hijacked or near-zero cost traffic requires neither.

But legitimate competition is also healthy, it not only rewards those who are successful, the dynamic of competition and the provision of more marketable products and services generate growth. You can bet every cent you have, that the vast majority of those who utilize scumware, will not be providing customers with something they will enjoy and consider value for money. So we lose two ways: individually when our traffic is hijacked and collectively as potential long-term customers are burned.

What exactly is "walking the walk"? I cannot - for example - begin a case against someone for violating AFF's trademark: only they can do that. There are thousands of webmasters who are not practically nor financially in a position to use even the limited protection the law provides.

Meanwhile, Traffic Gigolos is the latest sponsor to be mentioned in a thread like this. But they could have been anyone and tomorrow there will be more and different targets. Every single one of us, big and small and including those who have resorted to non-competitive ways of getting traffic, is vulnerable to someone willing to write out a check without caring about how their traffic will be delivered. It doesn't make any practical difference whether they pay someone like Zango directly, or an affiliate using scumware, or who has a site based on stolen content, or whatever.

1. Some of the biggest sponsors in this business are using and/or turning a blind eye to scumware and other non-competitive practises.
2. Other big sponsors, along with major traffic sources, are sending traffic to the primary offenders.
3. All of us here are supporting a board which generates income by accepting advertising from offenders.
4. Offenders are welcome at trade functions and actively participate in them.

That's the reality and as such, online porn might as well put up an invite to anyone who wants to screw someone else. That is what is truly pathetic, because we have no control over the extent to which legitimate competition is bypassed. We have no control over who is targeted. The whole ludicrous scenario is rationalized - if at all - entirely on past and current earnings, without a thought for the future, beyond - presumably - the testosterone-fueled fantasy that if the beneficiaries of today's scams become victims of tomorrow's, they will be able to handle it.

Without any "walk", all that remains is talk. You cannot really imagine that scams will cease to be front and center of this industry, if those who object just quietly drop their links to certain sponsors and traffic sources and no longer visit boards which accept dubious advertisers? There cannot be anything those involved in doing business this way would like more, than to be able to present a friendly face which no-one ever questions, while at the same time undermining the industry and everyone in it. And there is the small snag that if no-one talks about this issue, we would have no way to know who are the villains and the victims (you really want to send traffic to sponsors it may never reach?).

With zero entry costs, this industry is always going to have an army of people just passing through. Young as it is, right now we also have lots of successful people who wouldn't make a cent if they had to start over. Between them, plenty of support, direct and indirect, is guranteed for things which will earn $5 today even if they cost $10 tomorrow. But that is more reason, not less, for those who do plan to be around for the long term, to keep chipping away.

"officially illegal". If we wait for the courts, you will get the decision about at the same speed we got the COPA decision (1998 law, 2007 ruling). Meanwhile, they will install how many millions of rootkits and run how many zombie machines?

It would take less than a few minutes to show that the VC product isn't good - it preinstalls many things BEFORE it asks for permission, so even if you say no, the machine has still been rooted. Ugly shit. Install it, I dare you.

Cut off the method for moving money, and thier business gets harder.

For once, we agree.