We address this sort of electronic means of altering links or ID's in our terms of service for a reason (do all of your sponsors include such clauses? Maybe time to check.). As stated already, any new "whales" will always be under scutiny. Newbies dont just pop online one day and then start sending 100 joins per day.

If anyone see's this sort of thing, we absolutely want to know about it so we can confirm the activity and take action. Same with content theft, or any other attempt to defraud or mislead.

PimpRoll
AdultElite

ps: a "bounce" script could be as simple as:

A tip to new adult webmasters, every spyware scum will try to have you promote their shitty installs and shit for like $1 per download. DONT DO IT you are fucking yourself and everyone else in the end. NEVER EVER promote ANY installs.

like I was saying earlier, a 301.

If someone wants to post a sample encryption routine, that'd be cool.
But ultimately, the decrypted URL *must* appear correctly in the clients browser, so I think you can only do so much and then just track click counts as noted above.

Thanks for sticking your neck out ... :thumbsup it gives me alot more respect for you guys ,

When you post a thread like this, why not show us some code, show us some exploit, show us how it modifies affiliate HTML or linkcodes? I can not walk to our security guy and tell him "Come up with a solution to these weird Trojans, ok?". He'd look at me and laugh. I need something more physical than mere assumptions and allegations.

I take it 75% of the Internet is infected with this type of trojan horses? C'mon, please.

your worried about refcodes getting changed? its just as easy to add a list of sites in the same niche to a file and redirect any hits to those domains to another link.

so i dont think the problem lies on the sponsor at all. some of these fuckers could be very hard to catch. or they could just be stealing all of the hits to shit like AFF, SexSearch, etc to thier own shitty dating sites. there are lots of ways to do this.

how about everyone starts promoting Anti-Virus products and making sure to send in virus reports everytime you come across installers.

We agree with you guys. Any sort of fraud should be reported to sponsors. Dont just take it, advice us, snitch on your neighbors, we'll take action. We understand that this is going on and in the long run it hurts both the sponsor and affiliate for the various reasons posted above. This is nothing new and we will continue to scrutinize sales and uniques, from new AND old accounts--as always. We are always vigilant. Contact me directly if you see anything suspicious.

This is a hell of a thread. Smokey/AdultSeriesCash when you guys get that "project" in order, pls mssg/email me or make a huge announcement. Sponsors need to know of every way to protect affiliates and their money.

lol, you should see how all these dating sponsors use spyware to advertise over the top of each other(and big name sites), it's crazy.

the theft has gotten out of control. the internet is filled with scammers it fuc kin sucks for the straight shooters.

Mind icq'ing me some info on that? My ratios with tcg have been extremely wild the past 6 weeks and unfortunately I have been cutting traffic because of these ratios so anything that could point out a clue as to whats going on would be really great.

WG

Yeah I would like to know as well, because that statement is not true.

Somewhat amazed that no one has seriously brought this problem up yet, seeing as it's been something that's been common knowledge in the mainstream realm for years now. Many of the mainstream networks are pretty scrupulous of about this stuff now, with CJ I had my payment frozen until i filled out some huge questionnaire and walked them through how my marketing method worked since I had too many hits without a referer.

Great point! ....this is very true, we can't resolve anything based on hearsay and innuendos.

Contrary to what I have been reading, I believe most sponsors do care about this problem but are not aware of it happening to them, IF it is even happening to them.

Correct, but the point of putting encrypted links on affiliate pages is to ensure that your own bounce script gets called without getting detoured so affiliates can count their outbound traffic (the bounce can bump a counter and/or the script itself will be seen in the affiliate weblongs).

Then, when the bounce redirects to the public affiliate link, any 'unfriendlyware' taking that traffic to another account will result in the sponsor raw hits being less than outbound hits for the (victimized) affiliate.

It really is time for sponsors to disclose raw/uniques to their affiliates so they can respond to theft of this nature.

But with the recent GFY thread of 1/2 life of cookies which preserve an affiliate's claim to a surfer in the eyes of a sponsor being as short as the lifespan of U92-236, I won't be holding my breathe for sponsors demonstrating more proactiveness.

Throw in cookie stacking/overriding and for many sponsor programs the affiliate is simply promoting the sponsor brand (with all the sponsor domains visibly watermarked) with less and less chance of being rewarded for their marketing efforts (esp. if the surfer decides to type in the sponsor domain the next day and the (if/any) affiliate cookies have crumbled).

I have a growing respect for sponsors who let their affiliates generate ALL the sales - no conflict of interest then. Sponsors can focus on managing their programs and keeping their affiliates honest rather than competing with them.

Even if someone gets their account canned. Some other sponsor is gladly going to take the traffic. Instead of hijacking the refferal id's, they will just send the surfer to a similar paysite.

unless we gonna do it :pimp :pimp

I know what you mean, dcortez.

We show 1st page raws and uniques, and it's usually a very close count. I think normal browsing is +/- 3% referrer loss (before things like nortons etc. that are made to hide referring url came around).

This is a mess, but if you create count.txt with a zero in it, then save and upload and chmod to 666 in the same location as the php itself, it should increment a counter then jump to your sponsor code.
Someone who actually knows PHP can fix it up as you please. It was all I needed so cobbled it together, lol.

BTW: issues like this are why we dont rely on cookies. They are client side, and vulnerable.

Yep, there's the best idea yet. Give all the would-be idiots that haven't figured out how to do it a good example of what does work.

Wow.

Good point.

That's why affiliates at least need to know for which sponsors their traffic is being jacked (by reconciling their outbound hits with sponsor's raw counts).

Then if a sponsor gets burned (ie. sponsor links redirected to another sponsor), at least the affiliate can change to another sponsor which is not being redirected.

When enough sponsors get dropped, then I'm sure they will apply more of their resources (technical and/or legal) to address the issue.

I the meantime, at least the affiliates will get full benefit of sales.

I could every banner view and every outgoing click on every site I own. I know exact ratios, locations, etc. I compare this data regularly to what the sponsors report as traffic, and look for major discrepancies.

I do also randomly click sponsor links on my sites and follow them right through to the signup page, checking to see if there is a cookie or other infomation set that says my referal code is still in effect.

Between hackers and 30 day cookies, there are some pretty bad things going on out there right now. I hope the sponsors clue in to the amount of theiving, stealing, and copyright violation that some sites and "webmasters" are doing to make money, and take action to terminate these accounts (and show an account terminated screen, not just quietly passing the traffic and "not paying")

Ale

100 assholes

edit: fack...101

You're ever more paranoid than the rest of the poeple in this thread.

Have you ever sat down on a computer used by someone who isn't internet/tech savvy? Seventy-five percent may be a little high, but there are certainly a considerably significant amount of computers infected by some sort of spyware.

The majority of surfers out there use IE and only a small portion of those consistantly run Windows Updates and apply security patches.

Whoever thinks 75% of his sales are being diverted or "rewritten" by Trojans is either joking or compeletely delusional.

Does it make a difference if it's 75, 50, 25, 5? I mean, seriously, how much should the affiliates lose before the sponsors step-in to make the required changes?

We all know that spyware is everywhere around the internet. Of course, no one can tell how much of it is used to steal signups. My point is that some action must be taken before this becomes a really big problem.

Sponsors (still) need affiliates. You give us everything - content, hosting, marketing tools, etc. What's the big deal about protecting our sales from getting stolen?

Do you really think big sponsors care? They are getting their sales anyway....

I do believe most sponsors DO care about this problem and threads like this help to elevate the visibility of theft in general.

Like WG said, I dicussed ratios and theft with everyone I saw in Toronto. While this was not the theme of Webmaster Access, it certainly was the main topic of conversation with the people I talked to througout the weekend.

Like many of you, I have seen a general downward trend with many of my ratios and it just doesn't make sense outside of theft.

However, like David-PG and Jay-TCG said above, I don't truly understand the issue well enough to go to my programmers and say "fix".

Obviously, if this theft is as bad as everyone seems to say, then my webmasters (and me by proxy) are getting scammed out a lot of money so its worth investing in developing solutions, I just don't know where to begin.

So with heavy traffic guys like Wired Guy and Marian, and sponsors like Perfect Gonzo, TCG and Pimp Roll all agreeing that we have a common enemy, the next step seems to be a better understanding of what needs to be done.

Having read this whole thread, I am still unsure if there is a fix that us on the traffic generation side can do, or if this is something that only the programs can do (other than scrutinize new whales).

I am interested in helping stop this theft as its costing me and my webmasters big money, but where do we start???

Matt

Holy cow...
I agree with you for once.

Just today we someone post stats...

1 in 34 while another other run around proudly showing 1 in 800...

So maybe 1 in 34 = Overall declines after the Affilaite ID swap for that credited ID, err....I mean traffic thief...

Go Fish!:1orglaugh

I think --MARIAN-- is dead on. Does it matter what the percentage is? I'm not some big shot pulling in six figures. Even it was only 5%, I'd rather not lose it.

Where did the 75% figure come from anyways? I might be wrong, but it seems you pulled it from thin air.

I'm saying there is no problem here until I see proof. Period.

You're asking the sponsors to "step in". Step into what? You're crying for the solution for an issue that is theoretical at best. Theoretical until I see proof. I monitor thousands of affiliates day in day out and have yet to discover anything suspicious that matches the description given.

But I understand people need a scapegoat to bash when sales are down for a week or two. So let's bash sponsors. From a strictly scientific point of view, lower sales can only (!) be explained from two angles

- Sponsors shaving
- Trojan horses redirecting traffic

So everybody chime in into the bashing and demand "Sponsors step up and do something, quickly!". Nothing will happen because there is no issue at hand. In two weeks you will have forgotten this thread.

Okay, enough sarcasm.

Sorry but that's the truth, but then again, maybe I am completely wrong. At this point in time with the numbers I see there is not the slightest reason to panic. Send me proof or at least a little idea of it, and we will put resources (programmers, network engineers) to work.

Good night.

Nope, I didn't.

I don't see anyone crying, I see people discussing a potential problem.

Some may be looking for a scapegoat; I'm looking into a reasonable explanation why are sales steadily declining since january. And it's not just me, trust me.

Also, what are we left with but speculating? All you can hear is "Sales have hit the sky! We're having the best month ever! Nothing wrong with us!" and "All sales are processed normally, there's nothing on our end, if you have a problem logging in - contact us", etc.

So, unless you have something useful to add to the discussion, I'd suggest that you go and monitor another 1,000 affiliates and skip on the sarcastic comments.

Let's see.

Higher gas prices? Lower consumer confidence? Housing prices coming down gradually? Rising interest rates? Stagnating stock & mutual fund evaluations? Sorry for trying to make some sense here. It's more fun to bash sponsors though.

I never posted any garbage even close to that, ever.

Another kick ass post Smokey! :thumbsup

I never said you did but take a look around and see what most sponsors claim in each "sales are down" thread.

Ok, so I see a lot of webmasters are in agreement here and from the conversations I've had with program owners and reps, they're noticing similiar trends. So to me, I'm seeing one of two issues, processing or some sort of hijacking going on. I tend not to believe its a processing issue since this has been ongoing for nearly 3 months now and I doubt either processor would put their scrubs like this kind of radical ratios, so the only other case I can think of, is some sort of hijacking. If this is the case, then these joins are going somewhere, there should be some sort of whales who are immensely profiting from any hijacking who is going on, so it shouldn't be hard to find their accounts??
WG

Who's looking for a scapegoat now? While we're at it, let's blame the nice weather, the weekend, spring break, the summer slowdown, Christmas credit card bills and the start of the new school year.

No one is bashing sponsors. And no one is bashing Perfect Gonzo, so drop your guard a little. Are you really denying the spyware epidemic that has hit the internet in the last couple of years? The scenario described by Smokey is entirely feasible, and the only way to effectively curtail it is on at the affiliate program level. I'd love to hear you argue otherwise, from a technical aspect.

I'm no programming wiz, but the methods suggested to help prevent this are far from being unreasonable or resource-heavy. We're talking maybe a few hours of programming work and an extra hour or two of manual inspection. Worst case scenario, you find no problem, end up short a couple of hundred dollars, but you increase the trust and respect your affiliates have in your program, as well as attract some new affiliates. Or, your discover the issue is rather serious, help catch or inhibit a thief or two, and again increase the trust and respect your affiliates have in you. And this doesn't just apply to PG, but to any programs out there.

:thumbsup :thumbsup just a little sleuthing on the backend , and some guts.. like i said i think the biggest problem is when sponsor dont wanna question the whales because it means a loss in sales ( and sometimes they dont realise it wont mean a loss in sales , just a decrease in the amount of "skimmed" sales to that whale )

( p.s. kind of like the wildline thing , although diff topic)