Sponsors - what if your #1 affiliate was a cheater?
 

Sponsors - what if your #1 affiliate was a cheater..he doesn't cheat YOU, but he submit tgp galleries and then redirect them to your site, would you ban him or would you close an eye?

let see how many of you can be honest...

Oracle, we all know you are not any nr.1 affiliate on any proggie so u can quit that talk :winkwink:

That wouldn't be a violation of the terms of the affiliate program but a dispute between the tgp and the gallery submitter. If I was the affiliate program, I would not do a thing since the dispute is outside of my hands.

WG

Since technically the person is not doing anything illegal 99% of sponsors dont care about things like this.

Whats right and wrong and whats legal or not are 2 diffrent things.

i'm the #1 affiliate is reselling your sister, now stfu.
i'm not a cheater either.

They aren't cheating the program. That's not to say they wouldn't, since if they'll cheat one way, they'll most likely cheat another.

and you don't promote ARS because in the past they didn't give a fuck that one of their affiliates copied your sites? :winkwink: According to your logic, they shouldnt' care about that, since that was just a problem between you and that guy.

theft and changing gallery's is 2 diffrent things.

wrong, if someone redirects gallery traffic that doesn't mean he will steal cc numbers and stuff like that.

It doesn't mean he will, but it certainly shows an inclination to "bend" the rules to suit himself.

actually both are theft.

My dispute was with another webmaster copying and pasting identical copies of all my pages. That's copyright infringement and that webmaster was terminated from a different affiliate program for the same thing. Copyright infringement is recognized under the DMCA and I do expect an affiliate program to respect this.

In Oracle's example, we're talking about redirection of traffic. While its against the TGP's rules, I'm not aware of any laws that would prohibit this. I could be wrong.

WG

what if you add spyware to that redirection?
installing spyware is illegal, should the sponsors ban them then?

I disagree. Stealing copyrights by copying and pasting someone's pages is clearly theft and recognized in court. Now if I was a gallery submitter the claim I would use is that the gallery is on my site, my design and under my control. If someone links to my gallery and I change the page, then I don't see any theft here. Everything is still under my control and I can do what I want with my webpages. You have every right to remove my links but I don't believe this is theft.

WG

Oracle you are a donkey but i like you

You mean like this guy? http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showthread.php?t=440874

If you're installing spyware instead of sending to your original sponsor, what does the original sponsor have to do with it? Unless I'm reading that wrong.

WG

yup



.

you can pop both can't you?

edit: or promote the sponsor via the spyware

ya i got the idea of this thread

I think I'd need a better example to understand your exact meaning, but basically, if spyware is on the gallery page (gallery submitter controls it) then anything can go on it without the affiliate program caring (so long as you're not promoting that affiliate program from the spyware). But if you use spyware to get traffic to the affiliate program, then that's a problem.

WG

We had that question a couple times and only a fool would think that sponsors should start exchanging "to-be-banned" lists with tgp webmasters and whatnot, and that this question would be controversial or hard to answer. No sponsor will do anything and RIGHTLY SO

My sig hurts.

Speaking of cheating affiliates, we had the case with one of our affiliate that registered and quickly became one of our top affiliates.

He was having HUGE connections with our dialer.

We discovered that he tricked our dialer and was making autodials with it :mad:

We made testings to be sure and we were right.

We cancelled his account and didn't pay him.

So, even if that guy made tons of money with us, we couldn't let him going on acting like this cause, as u know that the dialer issue is very sensible, we can't take the risk to get huge fines and to see more en more regulations about dialers.

It's because of that kind of cheaters that many regulations happened regarding dialers in countries such as Spain, Switzerland, Germany...

bump.....

I wouldn't hesitate - I would ban him.

Cheats need to be shown 0 (ZERO) tolerance.

lighten up and take a joke man :1orglaugh

amazing how many people think they need to cheat when if they just worked legit they would be more than fine.

Here are my :2 cents:

Only if the person promoting the affiliate program got into some seriouse shit which then brought the actual affiliate company into the mess then the issue is with all parties. Lets say that TGP owner goes nuts and puts the affiliate on blast on every important board such as GFY! What then, they would have to defend themselfs again some idiot right?

:pimp

If I was a sponsor I wouldn't ban the guy. Not even if he was my #100 affiliate..

some very funny replies here...
i would love to see you running an affiliate program...you have 100 active webmasters, 99 of them send you a total of 300 joins a day and the #1 affiliate alone send you 50 joins a day, i would love to see you guys shoot yourself in the foot.

Can you point me to a source that says that? I am aware of discussions about spyware but unaware of any actual passed legislation.

I don't see how spyware that fully discloses what you are getting into before you click the OK button would ever be illegal.

Seems to me like a lot of people are helping foster an environment which encourages everything from dubious ethics through to outright cheating, based on the logic that providing they are not themselves victims, it isn't their problem. That's an extremely simplistic and naive point of view.

Even if we are not specifically (and successfully) targeted by someone, we are all directly affected because of the effort we have to put into avoiding being cheated. And the reality is that with scams of one kind and another so prevalent, it is more a matter of when, rather than if, we all eventually do become victims. When it happens, with luck it won't be an expensive lesson, but think on the recent case of the outfit which turned a blind eye to email abuse.

As to the short-term justification that you don't want to stop someone who is a proven income generator, that often doesn't hold water either because frequently all he has done is divert sales away from another affiliate. He hasn't actually generated additional sales.