Oh wait I think I read in the FTC documents that Hotbar was exempt from some stuff....so that's why they are now using that name.

Gotta find that document again damn it.

Here it is:
http://www.ftc.gov/os/caselist/05231...isionorder.pdf

See section: I

And are spending more as we speak.

Your 'affiliate' was also the subject of board posts. What makes you think he was talking about you? too funny

All it would take is one email to all their billing accts from Rand, CCbill or Jettis and the coffers would be overflowing. I'll go on record as the first paying recruit.

He wasn't talking about me because he didn't really say those things.

Our team have ALSO been in close contact with Zango and lets just say that about 25% of what you read here on the message boards is accurate. The other 75% is hype or distorted.

The truth will come out very soon.

I hear this quite often on this board and very rarely does it happen.

Sounds like you missed all the zango drama earlier this week where it was discovered that a Quickbuck owned signup form was popping up over ccbill and epoch join forms on zango infected pcs. Even though it appears that Quickbuck directly was targeting those urls via Zango, they were quick to shuffle off the blame on a rogue affiliate. Zango isn't going to reveal whom was targeting those urls, but Quickbuck knows.

Reread your previous reply to me where you insinuated I had just skimmed the original thread, when in fact I understood it and was trying to help you understand what Rand's original post meant when he referred to "advertiser".

Great news Rand!

At this point, I guess we should be cautiously optimistic. I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt until they totaly screw me over, so this is a chance for Zango to prove their good intentions...or not...

Matt

I don't think there's any need to plaster hate on Rand, he's posting an official response from a large company and has to be careful what he says publically. I'm sure there's more going on behind the scenes.

Rouge Affiliate is the online verison of "two black youths in hoodies with a gun". The generic blame all excuse for all that can't be explained any other way.

black people don't rob old ladies?

Glad to see Epoch take some action :thumbsup

I think it sounds more like a comic book villain rogue affiliate. lol

I caught the drama, I caught that it was a quickbuck owned join page and all that, hell I caught that it was a hidden program. I also saw where they said they termed that affiliate. Sure plenty could point to quickbucks doing it, yet it was not solid proof and they were not about to turn over the advertisers identity. So alas I was asking if Rand got any info on whom that advertiser was.

The insinuation was not meant to be taken as such. Your reply to me just made next to no sense as to my question. I just figured you may have had done something I have done myself and that was skim over something and reply or quote wrong person.

The real issue is that Quick Buck has been found at the end of a couple of dodgy things in the last little while, and their entire handling was basically "shoo flies!".

I'm willing to go along with you on this if you get the attorney and he explains to us how we can/will win the case(s).

IMHO Zango is just the tip of the iceberg, they have a program that end users voluntarily install, they have a company with a public site, so they're easy to go after.

There are a ton of guys out there infecting end users with spyware, and then using it to steal our traffic using these same methods, and we don't know who they are or how to go after them.

I'm all for asserting our legal rights and going after people who steal our traffic AND people who steal our content.....BUT I'm not willing to throw money away just to push against the ocean and "fight the good fight" if it's not going to make a dent in the amount of traffic that's stolen from us on a daily basis.

Something I don't think alot of people realize is that this spyware shit hurts affiliates the most.
In alot of cases the spyware programs aren't taking the traffic away from the program owners, they're simply replacing the referring affiliates code with their own. The program owners in many cases are getting the same number of overall signups, it's just that the wrong affiliate is getting credit for them.
This is one of the reasons margins for affiliates have been dropping so drastically as of late.

Lenny, every day I dream that microsoft finally makes Vista work properly without requiring a quad core processor, so that users can upgrade from there. Most of the sneak attack infections would be lost in that, because of the way the security is structured.

At this point, I am suspecting that about 50% of all traffic is lost to scumware.

Props to all you guys :thumbsup

Right, the legal option is not the solution here. If Zango really faced legal heat in the USA they would move offshore.

This is more of a technical issue...The whole porn site and join page methodology is insecure.

it's not a project that I want to organize, and I also don't network and socialize like I used to because so many webmasters are just people I have no interest in knowing or ever being around given the state of the business these days... it would be more of a project for a large company that provides webmaster services, has great contacts and whom webmasters want to impress. I just want to contribute to it.

ie a billing company.

For those who said these guys are the tip of the iceberg, once this type of traffic theft is declared illegal all it takes after that is a lawsuit to prove they're doing it, not that what they're doing is illegal. That will already have been established, which makes the whole process simple. Traffic buyers, at that point, will also share culpability. I think then what needs to happen WILL happen and people who engage in this type of activity will go to jail. Which is where thieves belong.

If something like this doesn't happen, and soon, what you're going to experience is a total free-for-all (if that isn't already happening) where webmasters who WANT to be honest and do biz like it's supposed to be done will have to throw up their hands and start getting dirty just to stay in the game. If someone is stealing a large percentage of your joins by targeting your domain, what are you gonna do? You're going to have to go bid on your domain yourself, then you'll bid on who you think is stealing from you and then it's just going to escalate from there, until you're no better than the first person in the chain.

traffic buyers, hosting companies and registrars are still in the US.

Good to see Epoch responding to this.

Man, I give up, feel like I'm beating my head against the wall trying to carry a dialogue with you. Re read the thread, I was attempting to help you better understand the situation because your initial reply of "An advertiser? Hmmm that would cost a lot of cash if it was AN advertiser. Any info on who this person or company would be?" gave me the impression you didn't understand how Zango works because being an advertiser with them costs very little, not a lot of cash as you said. Then you said I skimmed the initial post and needed to read it, which again was incorrect. Oh well, I tried.

good job man!

HAHAHA I feel the same. Lets just say we both get it and be on same page.

My poor assumption was that Zango admited it was an advertiser doing all of those pop ups on the join page. As in a single individual.

Seriously though ussually im easy to communicate with and I also like your posts. No idea why we are playing like Rams when we both seem to be agreeing. So lets drop our sillyness, I will gladly take fault. I have nor want no issue with you and respect many of your opinions.

i can't wait.... expose it. the truth should be out in the open. If people need to lie or hide behind shit they shouldn't be doing the bad things in the first place. I have no sympothy for them. expose it.

Sponsors do lose, think of all the type in traffic they get from branding or their own advertising. In those cases they wouldn't have to pay out an affiliate, but because their own traffic gets hijacked by an affiliate using zango they have to pay out big bucks on traffic that should have been 100% theirs.

True there is swaping going on, aff targets sex search, sex search targets fling, fling targets aff, cams targets sex search, etc... the affiliates get lost in the shuffle. But in a lot cases you have 1 company targeting the fuck out of another who isn't playing the game. A lot of these companies are targeting the fuck out of ifriends but you wont see ifriends using zango, so they are taking a nice hit. Imagine all the money they gross a year and take 1-2% away from that. You talking millions lost. now why wont they sue zango, any lawsuit cost would be made back in a couple months of shutting them down.... i have no idea why they wont do it. makes no sense to me. but if i had 1/100th the money they have i would have sued zango a year ago.

good post i agree with all points.

Seekmo
hbtools
hotbar

All Zango...

peoplepal - not so sure about this one.


Zango was founded in 1999, Zango was known as ePIPO. It was one of the first "pay-to-surf" companies,

Zango = 180solutions

In 2005, 180solutions implemented a number of initiatives that were intended to show that the company was serious about controlling the distribution of its software to eliminate non-consensual installs:

March: Acquired one of their distribution partners, a Canadian company called CDT (dba LoudCash). This gave them direct visibility into and greater control of many of the formerly "third party" distributors.
June: Claimed to have re-notified its 20 million user customer base and implemented a program that notifies all users within 72 hours of install and re-notifies all users every 90 days thereafter.
August: Filed suit against seven individuals alleged to have illegally distributed its software using a botnet.
November: Announced an ongoing partnership with the FBI in breaking up a botnet ring in the Netherlands.
December: Ended distribution of the 180SearchAssistant and closed LoudCash (a remnant from the CDT acquisition). They claim that this removes the financial incentive for fraudulent installs, which many critics claim not to be true.
Despite the initiatives of 2005, 180solutions admitted that it is possible for malicious users to hack their install routines and thus cause fraudulent installs.[9] They claim that the percentage of fraudulent installs has dropped from over 10% to under 1%. Critics claim that the business model is untenable because fraud against 180solutions (which therefore harms unknowing users via non-consensual installs) can never be completely removed.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zango



I'm still shocked how much time people will complain about things on GFY and not spend 5 min to search google and do a little reading.

wikipedia is not the bible and zango can edit their own entries and I'm about 99.9999999999999% sure they have. Go to google and do some RESPONSIBLE research.

Why do you think it has been brought to the boards? Because people have been doing real research.

The things that he's talking about happened in 2005, PR moves after a big lawsuit where it was noted in federal court that zango was slipping in spyware via CP sites. No joke. They've been sued many times since and always settle, once for 1.5m.. there is a current lawsuit I found after about 30 seconds research where someone is looking to get 100k out of them. They've been sued many times, apparently ALWAYS lost, but the plaintiff always takes the money and runs. Zango is/was making 20m/yr. They can afford to settle.

He's brilliant though, much smarter than us :)

Something I can do for you? Is there a reason you're trying to add me to your icq list?

If you're planning on sending a standard threat or something of that nature, save it unless you've got something REALLY special for me, after 10 years the regular stuff gets boring.