Gotta love cheating webmasters.
 

Here's a classic.

Someone sends me an email with a dodgy little scam one of our resellers had going on, they just happen to run across it.

Someone (read:me) gets a screen shot of this whole deal yesterday and terminates cheating webmaster.

Cheater emails me today, wanting to know why his stats are set to $0.

Someone (me again) sends cheater the screenshot of his cheating.

Cheater then emails me back telling me thats an old nonworking url from his old tgp.

Now cheater is not stupid, he's obviously got this thought out, or so he thinks. He's using a name redirection service for his dns server on the domain, so he has killed it, dns error.

Now he tells me it's a mistake, it wasn't him, that's not his screen shot from YESTERDAY I have. That domain is old, it hasn't been working for awhile.

Unfortunately poor thinking he's slick cheater has failed to realize that the entire previous sales for quite some time are all ref'd from that domain, including yesterday.

Don't try to cash that last check pal.

I realize that resellers are quick to call sponsors cheaters, but believe me there are way more cheating resellers taking money out of your pocket than sponsors ever will.

:1orglaugh :thumbsup

...any bets on how long until he shows up saying "S.I.C. Cash isn't paying"
;)

Are they russian or canadian?

brad cheated on you already???

In what way did he cheat?
I can think of many ways for sponsors to cheat (manipulating stats, not paying), but how can a webmaster cheat someone with a pay-per-signup program?

You are not for real I hope.

Yes, I am. I'm just so damn honest that I cannot figure out how somebody could be cheating.
If it's pay-per-click one would send false traffic, but I guess anybody trying to do this today would get caught rather fast.
If it's pay-per-trial (where the payout is larger then the trail cost) one could convience everybody to sign up just for a trial and split the money with them - I guess this would show on the statistics (too many trials with no conversions), but would be rather hard to prove.
But I cannot figure out how one can cheat a pay-per-signup program?

Please do not missinterpret this post - I'm not looking for ways to cheat, I just think that the more we know about the cheaters' methods the better.

One way I ran accross was this... Pay per trial...at $40.00 and $35.00. webmaster was paying people to sign up... was paying them I think it was $15.00 for each sign up, after they showed proof of sign up.

Yeah, I figured that one out, but hahahahahahaha pays per sign up so I wonder how could anybody cheat them.

The thing you describe must be hard to prevent, I guess the only way to catch someone like this is if someone reports him.

Seems to me this guy might be guilty.
But you can also be victim of SPAM.
About 6 or 7 months someone was sending SPAM e-mails
with my domain. I got few complaints and first I didnt know why.
Look what happened to Candid Clicks.

sounds like the guy I find.
Doing the following:

Opening site in new browser
Resized pics
Linking to Thumbs
Opening a Console when our link is clicked
and last
Opening our link in a Console.

So I send this guy the bad news.....are you ready for the reply

Our Site was hacked and those were all done by the hacker.
so it was only like that for two day's.

Ya sure.

My site WAS hacked, i dont know why you dont believe me. I would never do something like that. :(

Don't sites get hacked like that all the time?


http://www.cheatski.com <-- learn how the professionals make real money

I do believe you...and the check is in the mail.

I don't have any friends so I guess I could never cheat..

LOL

kimmykim has joined sic cash and already slamming down the cheaters! woohoo :)

i wonder what the lady would do if we gave her a shotgun :)

You've been served.

I love the "dont cash the check" line.

:thumbsup

...any bets on how long until he shows up saying "S.I.C. Cash isn't paying"
;)


HAHA

Cheaters must die, but stop linking cheaters to Canadians...

I'm canadian and i don't cheat.

:)

KimmyKim, I love your name .

like my math teacher used to say..."nothing worng with cheating unless you get caught."

sleazydream,

what thoughtfull teachers you had :)

my math teacher had video cameras in the classroom and 6 assistants to watch us ( for a class of 25) when we wrote a test. He begged us to cheat, He DARED us to cheat.

I think he just LOVED writting "F" on people's tests when he caught them cheating. He was probally related to 12clicks when I think about it.

bingo. there's plenty of cheating americans out there, doesn't mean all americans are cheaters...

This is strange... somebody edited the name of the company on my post but left it on all the others... What's going on?
I feel my paranoia awaking.... :eek2

Yes, let us not make gross generalizations.

I live in the US and have had horrible experience with Canadian business people, but I've had just as bad of experiences with domestics.

It isn't the country you are from, the color of your skin, where your ancestors were born or what god you pay to, it is what is in your heart, the way you offer respect to others upon first contact and two of my favorite words, responsibility and accountability for one's actions.

kim, if you had evidence to suspect that this guy was cheating then I don't blame you for taking action.. however.. I think I would have contacted him about it first before just resetting his account to $0. Like someone said, there are spammers and con artists out there who might try to make you think that someone is cheating for malitious reasons. If it wasn't 100% certain what had happened, I would have told him that if it happens again he will have to undeniably prove what is going on or he will be paid his final check and dropped from the program.. somethign along those lines.

I fear that a lot of webmasters in the adult industry aren't aware of what can be done with computers.. ip addresses and domain names and all of these things aren't 100% solid, people who are clever can get around them, fake them, etc., and all without a trace. Jumping to conclusions based on a rumor is never a good idea, and often results in a flame war on GFY :)

2 things I learned from the Italian side of my family:

"It's only illegal if you get caught."

"I'm a legititmate businessman."

I like cheating wives

In my country that is a girlsname :321GFY :winkwink:

No, the name of that sponsor is not allowed on this board. Take a look at KimmyKim's sig.

Also, just to let you know, when SIC cash says they pay per signup, that means per trial.

That is no one is allowed to say their name, but me.....??

I suppose you think the little bastard was going to return the checks he did cash to me? Send me all the money he stole from the pockets of every person involved with SIC? Write me one check that wouldn't bounce to pay us back for stealing from us????

ROFLMAO. You know what? The last email he sent me that was his next excuse.

Webmaster fraud is just like shoplifting. It only costs the rest of the shoppers, or in this case referrers. If scum didn't try to steal you blind, there'd be alot less rules and alot more to pay out.

Oh, I see, it's an automatic censor, it does not allow it if you spell it together, but allows it if you spell it as two words. How silly.
Any reason for why you cannot mention them here?
Maybe I shouldn't ask, starts to feel like treading dangerous ground....

(had to correct "threading" to "treading", damn, too much programming ruins my brain)

You cant put one past kimmy on her watch!:thumbsup

Rofl

From the other side of the fence, there is a caertian sponsor I was wary of, but figured I'd send them some traffic.

Result:

My server stats showed the following: 1000 uniques to their join page over a couple days.

They counted 5, then zero, zero, then a sign up with zero hits...

I'm not going to jump and say shaving but if I can make a sign up with no hits...and yet not get any of a thousand clicks to a JOIN page to convert...well I should find another job.

On a side note I push one programme run by a guy who is a friend. And honest as a motherfucker...and he shows me my exact, real stats from his server and his processor. I average 1:200 like clockwork every month, month in and month out...1:186, 1:210, 1:198, 1:216

So what the fuck is up with these other folks...I kinda gotta wonder.

One cheater down.

I take it you've never ran a sponsor program before?

wait til DarkDollars pay per signup rolls out...I'm going to make 12clicks look like Mother Theresa...no warnings, no emails, auto ban for life on any programs I release and any other programs o mine they might be in currently :)

I love the "newbie mistake" excuse...imagine you're in an airplane with a first time pilot who makes a "newbie mistake".......

its kind of hard to make a mistake when promoting a per sign up program.

Kim, Skyboy... you're right. 1, I've never run a sponsor program, hell, I'm a newcommer to the adult industry myself, and I trust that as veterans, you are able to pick out cheaters by their actions better than I would be, given the same facts and information.

I didn't mean to tell you how to do your job, yet, as an American, and as someone who involved in the business of network security, that oftentimes what appears to be evidence of cheating can be not quite the case.

I mean.. as a program admin, it isn't easy. You see something questionable and of course you want to drop them immediately.. I dunno, again, I've never run one myself and perhaps if I did I would change my outlook, but nevertheless my current perspective tells me that I would pay them their last check and drop them from the progam, no questions asked. Ok, so they cheated me out of some money.. well, their networking skills were better than mine, so I got fucked out of a couple hundred bucks, so be it. If I feel that I was cheated I will make it publically known on message boards such as this.

However, not paying someone for past monies is dicey.. I mean, did they cheat to earn all of it? Part of it?

I dunno.. without getting into the legal mumbo jumbo, I think in these situations the best call is to pay someone their last check and drop them from the progam because you are suspicous.. is that not reasonable?

booker -- since you are new, I am going to suggest that you go and read the terms carefully on any of your sponsors you use.

I am not saying this to be mean or to put you down, I am telling you to be aware of the terms you agree to when you send traffic.

If you cheat, attempt to cheat, get caught doing either of the two with every sponsor I know of, you have forfeited your right to ANY money you claim they legitimately owe you.

Sponsors don't go after cheaters in court for the money they paid out before they found fraud -- in most cases its not a big amount and wouldn't be worth the effort of winning a judgement on a case by case basis. Even with a judgement your chances of getting money from deadbeats is near impossible.

Only real morons start out trying to cheat at high levels, most start small to test their sponsors fraud detection. Then they get a bit bolder and get found out.

However, when you start adding up 30 bucks here, 60 bucks there, times a few thousand resellers, you are talking about real money that only hurts every person in the program.

Kim... fair enough, if the original agreement is that if someone is caught cheating that they forfeit any and all money, then the person paying out can of course withhold any and all money.

Still, if I was running a program, I would want to be 99.99% sure that it was in fact cheating and not a misunderstanding or attack by a 3rd party, and for that reason I would contact the person in question before deleting their account.

However, it appears as though you had overwhelming evidence (his saying the site was old yet referrals from the day before, etc) and I am not chastizing you for your decision. It seems like this industry is a self-policing one, and that with message boards like this and many others, that if you are respectful of the rules and the industry and put in the time, that you can be very profitable without cheating, which is always the best way to go about it.

Specifically, as a newcommer developing a couple sites and generating traffic over the last 6 months, I am interested in meeting some more people in the industry, an aim/email/icq contact with you would be fantastic if you are interested.

I've never cheated a sponsor, and nnever would, I do plenty well doing it legit but...you know if a sponsor told me that upfront there's no way in hell I'd bother trying out his program.

If someone tells me I'm guilty until proven innocent they can kiss my hairy ass.

"oftentimes what appears to be evidence of cheating can be not quite the case"

Quick Review of the evidence:
It seemed that the guy had a scam page on HIS domain. Sales were reffered from that scam page. Screen shot is taken showing exact url, his domain and content of the page. Logs show that the scam has been going on for weeks. Scam page mysteriously disapears after his account gets canceled.

I don't think you can get any more solid evidence than this.

Someone would have to go through a lot of trouble to screw some webmaster over: buy a domain, put victims name in whois database, host the domain, and then use his own credit card to sign up, or send his own traffic so people would sign up. And, do this for weeks.

I think it's WAY more likely that he was screwing the sponsor, than some guy was trying to screw him.

Cancelling person's account and not paying is the least a sponsor should do, given the evidence presented. If I saw numerous sign ups from the scam page, I would probably even go as far as e-mailing the screenshot to his other sponsors, if any.

Ah woj, excellent summation -- and did I mention the cheater admitted it was his domain as well. For some reason he thought telling me he changed the subdomain structure foiled the hackers and thus proved that he didn't do it.

Of course a 1/12 ratio with a few joins from tgp traffic is also a dead giveaway something is up, but thats another matter entirely.

Thank God I was 1:50 last pay period! I'll make sure to blind link you guys in a few places, just to be on the safe side.

booker, this is where noobs get into trouble.
operators are ALWAYS at LEAST 99.9% sure that someone is cheating before they are canned.
We have the experience and the tools to catch cheaters in ways you can't imagine and in ways we don't talk about.

Operators don't kill good accounts. how the hell will they make money that way?:winkwink:

ummm, arn't you new to a sponser program as well (maybe even newer then the guy you're giving advice to)since you were just a sexertary banker before?

WHAT ABOUT THAT .1% that got FALSLY ACCUSED???????


WHAT ABOUT THEM?????