Why would affiliates programs...
 

Mask affiliate ID's in linking code?

Anyone wanna take a guess?

link popularity?

cause we can know how the bigboys promot their stuff
keyword they use, landing pages etc....

i guest that big PPC guys dont want us to know

because sometimes surfers will not click due to a giant url, thus is it always a good idea to mask it.

You screwed up his thread, he was gonna say for spam emails.

We assign every affiliate a unique number --- numbers are easier and faster to index, and take less space in our system.

Also, it gives our affiliates a little more security. If you know their username, you just have to guess their password. By assigning number, you'd have to guess both.

Steve Lightspeed

Badaboom Badabing.... give the man a ceegar.

Let me buy you drink.

Yeah exactly.
Its a full cloak that leaves detection upto the affiliate program itself of an abuser, leaving others out of the loop in reporting abuse.

Through forwarding a spammer encrypts his link code in the sent mail to a server that forwards the click to said program, then the program masks the af ID.

It gets more complicated to.
But it is an elaborate system built for this and this alone.

Told you. :1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

That'll be the end of that then.

If getting spam is your biggest worry in life, consider yourself a very lucky man...

What affiliates scripts do this?
There is only a couple.
The story goes on:)

I am just showing you the road to hell that was paved with good intentions.
Well not exactly good intentions there is a history play here.

Pretty easy to get around that if you just go look at the page proxied and referred as googlebot using firefox - its amazing the amount of people that use Yahoo hosting for email spam :)

I stopped using one paticular cams site that did this...........seems everyone else did too....... they sold up.

What do you mean by masking a affiliate id?
Can you show me an example please

This thread is not for the lazy minded.
You either know or you do not or would have to see it in action.

hmm looking and thinking.

Because NATS coded it that way and not much I do about it :)

Well NATS does offer unencoded linking codes now..

There was a day when spammers would be found out on the boards and dragged out into the open.

This does not happen alot now does it?
Sure does not, especially during these days when it should happen more often.

So now we come to finding out the affiliates programs that engaged with spammers knowing of this instrument that proactively cloaks them in a co-operation.

What happens next is interesting...

FTC has all it needs to set a precedence in finding affiliates programs ultimatly responsible for spam abuse.

This precedent will damage the industry long term.

Last time I checked, email advertising had some of the best ratios... why would anyone stop their best sales technique? Getting Spam has become a part of life, deal with it.

Unless I look I don't notice the spam these days.. With that, I don't think webmasters care much as long as that program isn't fucking them over.

See Doc...

Webmasters should care.
The whole "mind your own busienss" thing does not work.
The more ya let shit hide the worse it gets. Thats why this industry is where it is today.

I personally am always careful about who I do business with.

I make guns that convert, I know the dangers ( usually ) and I wont arm an Adult net terrorist sort to speak.
But there are people in this business that do exactly that.
Take a look around.

Thats my guess too, specialy when they signup under you or they use a similar username (more common than you guess) :2 cents:

We use numbers and we started with 1 lucky timbo got 69

But your an honest player bro:)