Epoch :: Regarding Zango
 

We would like to address the recent board posts about web traffic being improperly redirected. According to the posts, people are concerned that when a user clicks on a sign up page, a software program may cause a full-screen page for a different site to appear over the top of the intended sign up page. Once we saw these discussions, we immediately contacted Zango. Zango has assured us that it is investigating the situation and that it intends to get to the bottom of it.

Zango also told us that it has taken all appropriate steps to ensure that pop-up ads will not appear over Epoch and its affiliated websites. Furthermore, Zango has informed us that they have already disabled an advertiser that was the subject of board posts.

Epoch is committed to protecting the business of its customers. We are going to pursue all available legal remedies against anyone involved in any practice that improperly redirects web purchases intended for Epoch clients to other unintended sites. If you have any information about this matter, please contact us immediately.

-The Team at Epoch

Very glad to hear that.

Nice to see you reaching out to them and taking care of your clients. :thumbsup

Great follow through Rand :)

Brad

When will you just realize Zango is stalling you guys, they are doing it, and they make good money doing it, so the longer they get away with it, the happier they are, so they will keep stalling you and come up with ways to hide their shady practice better!

Now this is pretty good!

I am sure our industry will welcome this statement and continued pursuit to dismantle such practices.

Bump for actual business related post! :thumbsup

Great to hear Rand!

Great news

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?

I hope you guys have been in contact with ccbill as they have had extensive "talks" with zango about this.

This isn't some "issue" that zango needs to look into, it is how their program works. Unless they add your url to their exclusion list this will happen again. Did they say if your url has been added? They claim to have placed ccbill's url on the list.

I wouldn't trust anything those fuckers say. If they tell you they "are looking into it" they just telling something hoping you will go away. Unless you put extreme legal pressure on them, this problem is not going to be resolved for your company.

Also, keep this in mind. What about your clients that use your service. Just because they "claim" to not allow people to target your signup page, they still continue to allow people to target your client's sites. All they do is hijack the traffic further upsetream. It diutes the value of the traffic and they sell it for less and make less but they still take it from you and your clients. You still lose transactions so you make less money and your client still gets screwed.

No it wouldn't, anyone can sign up and bid on a cost per click basis to target certain urls that zango infected users go to.

thanks for that update.

i've been wondering has anyone heard from actual customers that they thought they were signing up for a particular site but instead got another?

seems like many surfers would of complained by now about not getting access to the proper site.

any word on that side?

Sometimes people skim, hell I do it.

"Furthermore, Zango has informed us that they have already disabled an advertiser that was the subject of board posts."

Rand, there are too many affiliated websites ;) Also what if someone uses you second in their cascading rotation?

"Also, keep this in mind. What about your clients that use your service. Just because they "claim" to not allow people to target your signup page, they still continue to allow people to target your client's sites. All they do is hijack the traffic further upsetream. It diutes the value of the traffic and they sell it for less and make less but they still take it from you and your clients. You still lose transactions so you make less money and your client still gets screwed."

This is the heart of the matter right here, and it's really not fair of us to hope that Epoch or CCbill will go to war against these guys. They have a company to run and have to watch the bottom line just like everyone else. Here's something Epoch, CCBill or some company with a lot of pull and the means to contact damn near every webmaster in the biz with one email COULD do: Start a litigation fund.

I would be happy to throw in 5 or 10k towards a kitty to hire lawyers to drive Zango completely out of business, with hopefully enough left over to take on the next company that acts in an exploitative manner ie Acacia or one of our adult webmaster buddies who tries to patent "using an image on an html page" or some such bullshit. I think it's doable and practical. A REAL trade industry group with REAL teeth.

Right on :thumbsup

Come on Rand.... Yes i read that part... I also read this part too" "Furthermore, Zango has informed us that they have already disabled an advertiser that was the subject of board posts."
For all we know thier "Steps" could have been to disable the advertiser who was doing it.

the better question is do you believe them?


Where do i get a list of all sites that use epoch. I want to start testing to see how many of them zango is targeting.

It's nice you got this reply from them, but i wouldn't take it for fact as it appears you guys have.

Has nothing to do with skimming, it has to do with understanding how Zango's system works. Zango refers to "advertisers" as those who bid on urls within their system to specifically target cause a pop up over a targeted url that zango infected users go to. An advertiser could be an affiliate or sponsor.

The "Zango is investigating the situation" part is a classic :thumbsup

I bet they were shocked to learn of this situation that in fact represents their entire business model. :error

Like the crack dealer saying

"You mean the same people will keep coming back to buy more from me? I didn't know! Let me look into how to stop this."

I realize that, I was curious if they were alerted to whom or which company. Typically the word "an" referes to one person or company.

Where did skimming come into play? Damn now your confusing me. I understand people bid on words, domains, whatever. I am just curious about the "AN" and if anyone knows who than would of been. I also mentioned it would of cost a pretty large chunk of cash.

That is great news Rand!


Do we know if the other spyware programs are also owed by Zango?

programs such as:

Seekmo
hbtools
hotbar
peoplepal

thx,
Ray

seekmo appears to be them and hotbar is what no comes up on the bottom of the zango pop up. It use to say zango, now it says hotbar.

Sorry but the statement above sounds toooooo funny :1orglaugh

Good to hear Rand, thanks for the info! :pimp

Rand, good news. Two things:

1) considering the circumstances, might it not be a good thing to reveal who was buying this spots, and

2) If they are going to extend this to "Epoch and its affiliated websites", would that include websites that process with Epoch? Sending them a complete list of the domains that process with Epoch would be a big step towards slowing the use of this product against adult websites.

Finally, if this is the case, I would hope you would communicate with RonC and let him know how to do the same for CCBill clients. It would be to everyone's benefit, I am sure.

although i trust epoch, i will never trust the word of a company that bases its business model off of swiping visitors from the person who earned them, to someone who paid to have the visitor stolen from someone else.

keep your eye on them rand. :)

If someone answers your 1) without asking numerous other questions that confuse you I shall punch my damn screen in protest.

It's good to hear, but this part made me laugh..


As if they don't have a clue as to what they were doing.

no interesting in putting together a pool of money to retain attorneys to really savage these guys?

Sorry, I meant to comment and say that is a good idea as it would be unfair to hope a biller would take them on. I would give what I could as long as the books are transparent.

Good stuff Rand, much appreciated.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA


"they intend to get to the bottom of it"

yeah... uhm.... i'm sure this all came as quite a shock to them... especially when people are bidding on URLs like "pay.ccbill.com" as keywords and zango reps are personally reviewing them and manually approving them before the clicks start.

its their business model. its how they work. its what they do. the entire point of their program is that they pop windows over peoples sites with more ads. their system allows the user to target specific sites (URLS) and keywords to trigger ads.

i love this business. "oh... you've busted us fucking you and 1000s of people over? wow. well thanks, we'll definately look into that"

wouldn't take much... 10 program owners at 10k each or 20 at 5k, any billing company could easily get such a coalition together. That should be enough to get any url hijacking method declared illegal. I don't see how it could stand up in court. Their only chance to fight it is to assert that surfers voluntarily sign up for this process and please correct me if I'm wrong, but the Gator case and some others have shown that this is a pretty weak defense.

:thumbsup
:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh
:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh
so the people who stole from you have assured you that they will get to the bottom of this... djeez :1orglaugh:1orglaugh

yes, epoch is about as smart as a box of rocks.

proof is that they believe zango.

the very reason most of their big accounts have been jumping ship for merchant accounts... 3rd party processing is a dying business.

the Gator case is key. Even though it was settled and didnt go to court it still is more then enough to show that anyone who takes them on would have one hell of a chance of winning. Not only would you win but I bet who ever sues them would win $$$ more then they spent in legal fees.

How nice would it be to get Zango's books opened up and see who has been spending money with them. I would bet AFF has spent millions with them.

I agree. Not to mention the processing companies that are hurt all the way down the line would have it in their best interest to fight this. I think it's possible if a few major players stepped up and offered to get the ball rolling.

Must suck ass to have everyone and their dog picking on your business model. I wonder what other rocks we will turn over and find your "rogue affiliates" hard at work.

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.