We need answers

So it appears we'll be seeing some of these names appearing again in a permanent place on the FTC website

From:
final documents about a spyware program made to pay 4mil(PDF)

bump ....

on to the prize! :thumbsup

so many sponsors remaining quite about this...

lack of a response is a response. :2 cents:

in reality, spyware costs programs much money as well, often corrupting natural "uncoded" SE links and turning them into popped up affiliate links, or replacing a blank or "no ref" cookie with an affiliate code.

I am sure that many of these programs are paying out thousands of extra dollars that they don't need to spend as a result of this sort of hijack... and the end result is that zango are the ones making the money, not anyone else... because the people buying the keywords are paying zango...

The scum are everywhere.

back 2 the top! :thumbsup

These 'sponsors' need to answer.. But what am I saying, they have been called out before on this shit, and never do shit.

To the top

So far,

Duke Dollars

Adult.com

Topbucks

Has came out agiant it in this thread.

Am I missing any other programs?

Iwantu ....

ok,

Duke Dollars

Adult.com

Topbucks

Iwantu

Who is going to infect themselves with scumware and test some of these programs :banana

Yeap Various has been on top of this. Thnaks Various, you are definetly someone I will do business with. the rest of you using spyware and too scared to change or come clean or even lie, lol :321GFY

wow,
nice thread.

What is intresting is actually you can have your own ads targeting aff using spyware. That make it super hard lo locate the bad ids from the good ones.
Not having a reply from them is not good at all.

Another thing I would like to remark is the spyware is popping up sites sometime without user intervention based on the user profile they get from browser hstory. This make the spyware to resemble a little with spam. That means sales will increase for the companies allowing this. Here would be nice to know if what they lose from sales stolen from search/engine is bigger or less then what they get from popups. Based on the fact they didn't reply I can bet sales are bigger from using spyware.

This issue illustrates just how dumb some of our sponsors are, because whether they use these services or not, so long as they exist, they are all vulnerable to whoever is willing to spend the most money.

Take someone who has - let's say - 40 sites. If he bids high enough, he will get lots of traffic for his MILF site. But it's perfectly possible that the exact same "service" is diverting traffic away from the other 39 sites he operates.

They are also vulnerable when affiliates use them. Because of the effort necessary to sign and keep productive affiliates, there is a real cost per affiliate, before he generates so much as a single sign-up. Let's assume that cost is affordable so long as the average affiliate produces what he does in an undistorted market. Now enter the scumware, which doesn't generate a cent extra when your own affiliates' traffic is being stolen, but guarantees that a lot of your affiliates will soon be looking for other sponsors.

More than that, a sponsor has no control over the choices made by unscrupulous affiliates. So sponsors A through E in a particular market sector, lose two ways when such affiliates decide to target sponsor F with their stolen traffic. They lose sales and affiliates.

Any sponsor who allows scumware to prosper but in particular those who actively support it, are helping to destroy "normal" market dynamics and they will become increasingly dependent upon scumware for their traffic. Anything, from legislation, through affiliate reaction, to being outbid by someone else, and they are f*cked.

As an example of short-term thinking and to hell with the future, supporting scumware is about as classic as it gets.

Unfortunately picture is bigger because is not only stolen traffic. Scamware generate new traffic using popups. This traffic will produce some signups as well. This will make some sponsors to use this way of making money. In short term thier sales will grow and proably will make more money. In long term webmasters like me and you will read or just see their sales going down when their traffic goes up and will move on to different sponsors.
But this is a long term move and just some of them will understand ;)

still looking for some response from those sponsors that think this is going to fade away..

gotta keep this on the 1st page

for sure

Catching this thread a little late? For the record, TwistysCash does not accept sign-ups from spyware. Without question, everybody deserves credit for their own hard earned money.

We think we do a pretty good job of keeping an eye on things but always appreciate a heads up from anybody who knows something we don?t. Kevin at twistys dot com, ICQ: 215-457-848 or phone: 416-361-2033. Thanks!

Here's a bump.

if they think this is fading away they are kidding themselves... Look at how many have stepped up so far, Dating Gold being the best and most recent example where a company had "worked" zango in the past and is now telling them to go :321GFY . Great Job Dating Gold!

we just went through round 1... round 2 will be a lot more interesting.

bump . . .

yep great post by Dating Gold!:thumbsup

I notice alot of people are saying that nothing can be done about this, and I tend to disagree. The first way to address this is for sponsors to not support companies that are essentially holding your traffic and your affiliate's traffic hostage, the second way is for webmasters to boycott / not promote companies that do business with spyware providers. This is directly taking cash out of webmaster's pockets and lowering their ROI. Whether it's doing business online or at a brick and mortar store, if you feel a company employs tactics that in your opinion are immoral or substandard, don't do business with them. If you want to change things, hit someone in their wallet.

This explain why my ratios at cams.com and webcams.com are so bad last months(surfer clicks but the sales go to the Spyware owner)
I am removing now all links to that sponsors until they do something about this and i hope you honest webmasters do the same until they clarify their positions about this.Spyware/stealware is like CP or Spam

You are right, just another form of shaving by companies that overwrite their own affiliates codes with scumware.

going up again for the good cause :) very nice thread will

the voice of reason, per usual :thumbsup

Hi Guys/Will,

My name is Sharon and I am the owner of LiveonCam. I just did a Google search for "LiveonCam" and I found this thread. I am a newbie to the online Adult Industry and my site has only been Live for a little over 2 months (after a lot of hard work to even get it to that point).

As I am new to this type of Business, I obviously don't know where to purchase my Traffic from in order to get the best value for money. I therefore have reached an agreement with an apparent "expert" in Traffic Purchasing where he would purchase traffic on my behalf for a commission fee.

Since we went live, I have been becoming increasingly concerned about how this person is actually going about getting traffic to our site. Whilst I am very happy with the amount of constant traffic to our site and the conversions we are getting, there are a number of issues which have caused me to "raise an eyebrow"!

This person has Affiliate Agreements with numerous Dating and Cam sites, including iFriends, Adultfriendfinder, Cams dot com, plus many more.

The first thing that concerned me was when the models would ask customers how they found the LiveonCam site, the response was always "I got a pop-up". When I questioned this person about that, he assured me that he was purchasing "pop-unders" from a very good, legal and ethical source.

Next, I recently found out that when customers would log into the LiveonCam site, they would get a Cams dot com pop-up. When I questioned him about that, he told me he had nothing to do with that and that Cams dot com must be purchasing pop-unders with "LiveonCam" as a keyword!

Whilst I don't know much about this sort of thing, I came to the conclusion that he is possibly purchasing traffic and then bouncing it around through all of the sites he is affiliated with using "pop-ups" or "pop-unders" and then he charges me (and the other sites he has the same Agreement with) for the initial purchase!

I may be wrong but none of this adds up to me. I was in the process of investigating it further and then I found this thread. I don't totally understand everything that has been said and I don't even know what "zango" is, but I will pass it on to my tech support/programmers first thing tomorrow for further investigation.

Whilst at the end of the day, I am getting good traffic and conversions for the amount of money I am spending on traffic, I am honest and ethical and my reputation is everything to me. I hope that this will not in any smear my good reputation and that of my business. Please be assured that I will get to the bottom of this and if LiveonCam is in anyway unknowingly involved in this type of practice, we will certainly cease doing so.

As I am a Newbie, any advice as to wether you think I am on the right track or not would be much appreciated.
:helpme

bump 4 you...

bump for a good q

Nice domain. Best of luck!

I appreciate your reply and explanation. Most companies either ignore the issue or laugh at us. You seem to be honest, and it goes a long way that you have posted here explaining your situation.

Zango markets itself as adware although a lot of people who have it installed does not know how it got on their pc. The way zango works, they target url and keywords. The person you are using to promote your site is likely just a broker who has an account set up with zango. All he is doing is buying traffic from zango and selling it to you (basically).
He is likely targeting other cam site urls which is how I would have come across your site. When someone with zango goes to my site and clicks a link to say ifriends.com, if you targeted ifriends, then your page will popup over my ifriends page. My traffic I paid for, my bandwidth, I sell my traffic and get them to click my signup link, when they do so your page pops up on top of mine via zango. My surfer likely thinks your page is mine and is the site I was sending them to. My traffic is stolen as well as my sales.

Zango just settled with the FTC for 3million dollars. They have a very shaddy past and both surfers and webmasters (adult and mainstream) are very pissed off with what they are doing. We are waiting for the laws to catch up or someone to finally sue them.

Google " zango" and you will get a lot of information on them. Not a company that any reputable company wants to do business with.

OFFICIAL STATEMENT: Adult Webmaster Empire's stance on supporting Adware&Spyware
 

In light of recent discussions about sponsors' stance on supporting adware/spyware I'd like to take this opportunity to express our thoughts and views on the issue.

Adult Webmaster Empire DOES NOT SUPPORT ADWARE NOR DOES IT ALLOW ITS AFFILIATES TO SEND TRAFFIC VIA ADWARE/SPYWARE. We have a zero tolerance policy on this and if we come across an affiliate breaking this rule their account will get canned immediately.

Views differ on whether it's ethical or not to use such methods to gain more traffic. Our message is plain and simple: We do not support these methods. No more, no less. Every affiliate program has a choice to make and this is the one we've made and stuck to from the very beginning.

We're confident that our products speak for themselves as straightforward no-registration-required live cam chat sites and strongly believe that we do not need to utilize such methods to get the most out of them.

If you happen to come across affiliates violating the above described zero tolerance policy of our program please feel free to email me with details.

(quoted from https://gfy.com/fucking-around-and-business-discussion/670624-official-statement-adult-webmaster-empires-stance-supporting-adware-spyware.html)

Thanks for the support Martin. And thank you Will for the explanation. It all makes perfect sense to me now. I am very dissappointed with my marketing guy, particularly because he has repeatedlty told me that he is purchasing the traffic from only "reputable" sources!!! I will stop using his services because I believe in Kharma. Wouldn't want people doing that to me so....... Does anybody know anyone else who acts as a Traffic Broker who is able to access better rates etc. and who has an honourable reputation?

Thanks again guys. I am so glad I found this thread.

No problem glad to see you don't support the crap either.

would say that dialers are in same category as spyware