Who will be the first sponsor to step up about the link code change / trojan problem?
 

This was posted by me on another board due the recent trojan/codec/exploit issues hurting us adult webmasters sometimes hard.

Sponsors collectively you have thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of affiliates ready, willing and able to report sites that are distributing trojans which are replacing affiliate codes with their codes (see http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showthread.php?t=713306 for more information). Why not offer some enticement to help employ them in policing such activities? I think I can safely speak for many of us when I say we want to help you put a stop to this.

Coming forward and admitting that such a problem exists and showing that you are willing to take steps to solve it would go a long way toward earning the long-term trust of many honest affiliates. Here's your chance - take it.

Forget rewards, I would be happy just to see the majority of sponsors actually do something about it when I report a cheating affiliate. 99% of the time nothing happens at all!

Just offer a reward of %10 of whatever the scammer had in his account.

- The sponsor wins because they got all those joins and only paid out %10.

- The person reporting the scammer wins by getting the guys affiliate account killed and %10.

Win/Win situation, and overall good for the industry.

I can verify that cheating is happening on several levels.

We killed another affiliate a few weeks ago that had http referral data from many sites covering many affiliate IDs. It was very obvious that they were stealing/changing affiliate IDs to their own account (which was killed).

I was not able to determine the source or exact method, other than it was generated by infected surfer PCs. I damn sure am NOT going to support or pay an affiliate that is cheating.

Any reports of cheating affiliates gets investigated by me and my team ASAP.
Action is taken immediately.

In fact, a few months ago BVF notified us of some scamming affiliates and we both terminated all of their accounts.

lets bump this thread...

I'm sure if anyone here can find affiliates stealing from other affiliates and you let the affiliate program know, they will take care of it. In general, affiliate programs "want affiliates to convert" and not one asshole to steal others sales.

Spyware/malware in general is hated and rejected by 99% of the affiliate programs. So rather than coming out to see which of the 1000's of us that already of course hate it. Find the other 1% that allow and produce spyware/malware.

And all affiliate programs know about spyware/malware problems.. It's not some hidden or dark kept secret.

Some programs simply do not get targeted due to size. Others have sent CD letters to the companies, and the companies do respond rather well. In general it is almost impossible for us or you to detect/find spyware problems.

And for the record..... The spyware problem is way way worse than a few affiliates on a few affiliate programs stealing cookies. Spyware "can" change the entire tour/joinpage/processor page/login page - without the surfer knowing about it. Spyware can turn on and off at different times, for scans, and rebuild and spread on its own.

Even these cookie stealing systems can be set steal to a %, or only to be ran from some countries. It's way more advanced and a problem than you think, way outside of our reach, just like yours.

Like I said.. In general, almost all affiliate programs do not support or want this type of traffic.

the rewards idea is just an idea to mobilize webmasters to do a bit more than nothing. I bet that in 95% of the cases when a webmaste comes across a virus/exploit/codec or other scum site he doesn't report which gives all that damn cheaters a better chance to monetize their shaddy practices.

sounds like a plan :thumbsup

Finally, a sponsor willing to post that this is not merely a wild accusation.

Thank you. You have no doubt earned the respect of many affiliates reading this :thumbsup

Given the nature of this type of activity it makes sense that links from many sites that go to a common processor domain would be affected the most (*ahem* __bill.com...). Let's see if any of the other affected parties step forward.

Might I suggest that some of the sponsors concerned about this matter join together to share affiliate data with one another for suspected cheats? Also regardless of the offer of a reward or not, it would help to get affiliates involved in this. It seems likely that the trojans are being distributed in galleries or MGP's, as well as other venues.

If your MGP affiliates are told to keep an eye out on sites they're trading with for suspicious downloads, that could go a long way towards limiting the spread of these trojans.

How i said in one of the previous posts, the problem seems to be that a lot of webmasters actualy don't care too much about it. Who know for what reasons, but it's a fact.

You are a bit to optimistic in my opinion. From my experience even 50% would be a high number for the programs that actualy care where their joins and sales are coming from and take immediate measures against it.

However, even if the majority of the programs "WOULD" deal with the problem as they should they need in first place info about it. Webmasters providing info that can easyly be checked by the affilate program would be a very good way to get a lot more of the cheaters out of biz or at least preventing them to make money.

I totally agree with you, but that shouldn't mean that we should not try every possibility to keep it down, to expose as many cheaters and scammers as possible. I'am rather trying to actualy do something than just saying it's nothing i can do against because it's just not true. If every tgp/mgp webmaster watches his trade partners closely for installs and reports them to the sponsors as well as cheater forums so other people are aware that they should not trade with such sites than a first and important step is done by reducing the traffic and income such people can make.
Again, that's why i thought about the idea with the reward system as this would mobilize realy a big percentage of webmasters and it would be a win/win situation for both. The honest webmaster reporting the shit getting a reward and the sponsor for saving a huge percentage as well + it would again raise the level of the conversations for all honest webmasters, so what speaks against that??

The bigger problem would be the sponsors themselves who are possibly creating these affiliate accounts using the various wares..

And I have a feeling this is being done more than people realize..

Over at Rhinopays, We are aware of this huge problem thats has been occuring for sometime now, And we encourage all affiliates to call out any possible cheaters or scammers doing any sketchy activity. We are not going to support any affiliate that is scamming his way to success. Put us to the test and I guarantee any affiliate caught cheating in any way with proof will have is account canned and He or she will be also outted!

There are a few large sponsors (they will rename nameless for now) that specifically make their money from spam, toolbars, and other less than above board methods. In at least one of the cases, the sponsor is very large and they have the work done in house.

It's a sad fact of life.

I said it in the other thread about this and will say it here.

I would can an affiliate for trying to fraud even ONE sale. ( with proff ofcourse )

Who is it? Out the pricks, specially if it is a large sponsor, and they are ripping off affiliates you should out them :2 cents:

A few leap instantly to mind...all of which advertise here

if you don't want to post it on this board I'll point you to another where such information would be appreciated email: sales at amateur-flix.com

When SurferBucks launches we will not except malicious traffic and will suspend any affiliate found to be using these methods... That is a PROMISE!

As far as offering a reward to those that report the issues, the only reward will be knowing you are helping clean up the community...

If we start offering incentives beyond that it will leave a gap for abuse of the system, the scammers will start reporting themselves to collect!

There is a mainstream sponsor offering a % of income reward to anyone who reports a TOS violation that results in termination. I don't remember who it is though.

This sort of thing would work great in adult since most scammers do it right in front of other affiliates.

Most mukware/malware/spyware installs I see either come from TGP/CJ sites, which 99% are redirect only sites with no galleries or content or banners. The other mixture happens through unknown methods such as iframe attacks.

Anyone that finds a webmaster frauding us, using spyware, or breaking our terms in a full out bad way.. I will pay you the amount the webmaster earned + $100 bonus. And if you can find spyware and frauders on these programs I will give you $100. mayorsmoney, topbucks, brutalbucks, madeinporn, yappodollars, and smashbucks.

:thumbsup :thumbsup :thumbsup

definitely! they should give a reward to a webmaster with a legitimate report of a cheating affiliate.

That doesn't make much sense at all. I doubt that a scammer will report himself to loose 90% and to gain the 10% reward for example that are in his affilate account. Not to talking about all the possible future revenues he will loose.

I doubt a criminal would go to police to cash the reward that is set for his head, how i said, your argument is without any common logic and sense.

Exactly, such thing can only improve things and get affilate programs willing to do so a lot more info about scammers, cheaters and other fraud activity.

sponsers will make money, because if they make a stand against it, all the ethical affiliates will join them. look at the sudden growth of fling.com

that's a really good start man, i'am happy to see some people took the idea and see how we all only can profit from it.

I hope you have nothing against if i transfer your post on another webmaster board along with your contact details.

I really like this thread, I will be back, my missus is whinging for a fuck again...

there are many more reasons why a sponsor should ALWAYS choose to support his honest and hardworking affilates. An honest affilate will work with/for you mostly for years if he is happy, has good conversations while the cheaterscum is maybe gone tomorrow, they are only here for fast money and after they try to cheat the affilates they won't hesitate to cheat the sponsor the same way as soon as they find a way that works.

Affilates that get hit due the recent scam technics will see bad ratios, bad conversations and much less money from given sponors wich will just result in either going out of business or leaving the sponsor in hope it will change their income with another one. So affilate programs supporting/tolerating actively or passivly such fraud will loose soon or late as well their ground (the affilates) for their success and you don't have to be a rocket scientist to imagine that a program with decreasing affilates will decrease itself as well.

let me guess
rimes with mammacash

btw, I see nobody brings into discussion how come this is happening
on a bigger scale everyday.
As bad as it may sound the affiliates themselfs make this possible.
Everyday hundreds of tgps and other traffic sources get hacked and infect
hundreds of PCs and frankly you'll see the same affiliates getting hacked
few months later again.
Nothing is beeing done about this and the affiliates that get hacked consider
it as the risk of doing business and move along.

It seems like there a very few sponsors repling to these requests.Although I am with you on this it also seems like alot of others are as well.I beleive we as webmasters need to get together with (all) sponsors and straighten out this dilemma!

this way he will still be able to send traffic thru that ILLICIT way...and still make money out of it....

So I am here to bust out the people behind this... From a post on adx by DanS where he pointed out that surfers were being redirected to a codec download on assisass.com I found the domain that the codec was being downloaded from...

The domain also has other exploits so I am not going to post the url but I will post the IP...

216.255.179.125

Some investigation of this ip revealed that it resolves to an ISP called InterCage...

From an earlier post you will find that the people that discovered the trojan at the University of Minnesota discovered that the varient that they wrre analyzing was being hosted by InHosters and they determined that InHosters was being run by a crime ring from the Ukraine.

http://lists.sans.org/pipermail/unis...er/026937.html

After digging a little deeper into Intercage I discovered that they have been blacklisted and accused of many crimes... including hijacking proxies and whole netblocks...

http://spamhuntress.com/wiki/Dyakon
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Spyware/?p=752

I did a whois on the domain serving the trojan and discovered that it was registered via ESTDOMAINS... there have been many posts on adx about the onslought of cheaters that have appeared over the last few months that were registered via ESTDOMAINS... the odd thing about most of these cheaters is that the traffic doesn't necessarily look like cheater traffic... it doesn't always have alot of proxy and it generates clicks... I think it's already been posted that this trojan generates fake traffic.

And then I hit the motherload...

InHosters, Estdomains and Intercage are all the same company...
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Spyware/?p=763

Holy fuckin shit thanks!

Emil Kacperski can now suck our fat cocks!!!

:BangBang:

Gaybucks is committed to terminating any affiliate found to be sending traffic or otherwise promoting our sites by unethical means, whether that is malware, toolbars, Zango, or any other inappropriate, fraudulent, or deceptive means of marketing our sites.

Further, if we believe there is credible, verifiable evidence from another sponsor or source that an affiliate is using malware or other deceptive means with another sponsor, we will terminate that affiliate even if there is no evidence the affiliate is using those methods with our program. In other words, our goal is to have zero tolerance for this sort of reprehensible behavior, and we want to make it difficult for crooked affiliates to jump from one program to another and continue their racket.

We will also roll out some sort of reward system for people who bring these scammers to our attention, but that is something that we have to discuss first.

I encourage other programs to join us in taking a firm stand on this issue.

Can I ask how far your commitment stretches? Do you actively check your affiliate's signup ups coming in against fraud like dustman and made2ordervideos do?

Hi Nation-X,

I am the President of Intercage, Inc. and let me clear a few things up. InHosters , Estdomains, Esthost are in no way affiliated with Intercage, Inc. Understand this can be a little confusing especially since Intercage has no web presence. But that will be changing in the near future. Over the years we have supposed many resellers and continue to do so, it's just a shame of course sometimes the abusive ones get all the attention.

Those links you are referring to are old and I personally have worked with Spamhuntress to remove a few issues before. Don't follow these forums but a current customer spoted this and sent me a link. Thanks Chip ;-).

Nation-X if you want to drop me a e-mail at [email protected] I will go ahead and make sure the abusive content get's removed.

Thanks!

:thumbsup :thumbsup :thumbsup

BTW here is my contact information if anyone needs it:

Thanks!

I wish what you were saying was true but AFF/CAMS, and Sex Search off the top of my head pretty much go against everything you just said.


Or I guess to put it better, AFF/CAMS and SEX Search fall into your 1%... but I do think it is bigger than 1 %, I am sure there are a good bit more companies that don't care where they get their signups from.

We've always done our best to ensure that our affiliates are treated honestly and fairly, but to be honest, I was not aware of the extent of the problem until very recently.

We do monitor signups and look for fraud, but the problem with the malware is the joins won't look obviously different from any others, so (as I said in the other thread) one of the things we want to look into is statistical analysis of the patterns behind the joins... if you have a sponsor with traffic literally coming from everywhere and not concentrated in any one source, and that sponsor has different conversion rates than other sponsors sending traffic from similar sites/promotion types, that would be very suspicious and we would act on it.

But to do that, we will have to write new scripts to analyze the traffic, and in the other thread there was some discussion about a collaborative effort to do that, which we'd be supportive of. Perhaps it can eventually be built into NATS, MPA3 and CCBill's own affiliate tracking.

But we're committed to acting on anything we can identify now, as well as investigating and acting on any reports we get from affiliates.

Only a few?

Let's see what it writes in some articles step by step:


taken from http://blogs.zdnet.com/Spyware/?p=763

so esthost is one of your biggest customers but your are NOT affilted with them? So all these criminals host with you but you are not affilated with them?

taken from http://spamhuntress.com/wiki/Dyakon

conclusion of the article:

from http://spamhuntress.com/2005/05/03/a...-up-their-act/

from http://spamhuntress.com/2006/01/07/i...-wmf-exploits/

Thank you i didnt feel like typin that :winkwink:

from http://netrn.net/spywareblog/archive...um-on-the-run/

Any Sponsors that are interested in having spyware removed from their programs please see my thread

Anit Spyware Coilation Sign Up

There is a guy there who claims to be the inventor of spyware and he says that he has the cure!!!!

Also any Webmasters that are sick of loosing money sign up!

Stop the madness..........

any link??