Spyware Still Cheating Merchants 82
Jamie found an interesting story about how Spyware is still on the move. It talks about how Spyware vendors are trying to clean up their image, but still doing fishy things. It breaks down several common types of spyware and some analysis of each.
Spyware FP (Score:4, Funny)
Ben Edelman, here (Score:5, Interesting)
It would be particularly interesting to hear from merchants and by legit (non-spyware-using) affiliates who are ripped off by the practices I documented.
Re:Ben Edelman, here (Score:4, Interesting)
Sponsored-search advertising is a ripoff. Google makes the vast majority of their money this way and I take issue. We have run numerous campaigns and stopped due to the lack of quantification. Talking with other merchants, people are starting to get disgusted by the google/yahoo/ms advertising avenues. clickfraud is rampant and we end up paying for it. recently, every time google releases earnings i can't help but laugh. all it takes is for a adwords merchant to start a campaign and watch their traffic and usage for a month to see what is going on. my feeling is that there is no better solution for online advertising, so people feel the need to do _something_, so they will continue to pay because they feel it is better than nothing.
Re:Ben Edelman, here (Score:5, Interesting)
TV ads continue to be annoying and people are actively avoiding them now. Instead of making better commercials that don't annoy people, they just keep shelling out the money for the same old crap.
Radio, ditto.
Newspapers, magazines... Other than the sale ads and video game magazines (which are disappointing, because the ads rarely tell you anything the actual game), I don't think I've bothered to do more than glance at an ad in years.
How is 'sponsored-search advertising' any different?
And you say 'clickfraud is rampant.'
Re:Ben Edelman, here (Score:4, Insightful)
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From what I read, the merchants are paying for advertising results that they would have received for free. That, in turn, forces merchants to spend more money on advertising and ultimately results in higher prices for consumers.
Re:Ben Edelman, here (Score:4, Interesting)
Click fraud can happen on Google's "content network". I just happen to be looking at one of my ads right now. In the last week, it's been shown 104 times on Google's pages. It's been shown 13,636 times on other pages using Google's Adsense. You know, the Google ads on other peoples' pages.
If I run a site and put Adsense on it, I get a percentage of Google's revenue for each ad clicked through from my site. Therefore, if I have more click-throughs, I get paid more. That's where click fraud comes in. The advertiser gets a higher bill due to more clicks, and Google pays the fraudulent Adsense operator a portion of the revenue.
You can opt out of your ads being shown on the content network, or even on certain sites. But as you can see from the numbers above, you'll be losing out on a HUGE percentage of your ad impressions. OTOH, in my experience the CTR off Google's sites is higher than the content network CTR, and quite possibly depending on what your product is, the people might be more qualified.
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i have a site i host with a friend of mine that uses adsense and i once clicked through on an ad because i actually wanted to buy what was being advertised (what a concept). it's against the ToS to click on those ads. but still, just one click. my account was shut down a few weeks later and i had to explain what happened to them to turn adsense on again. and we're not talking about giant monthly revenues here.
i'm sure there's a cookie/ip fingerprint 'cause
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Advertising would be more effective if there was less of it, but advertising agencies, etc just want to sell as much space as possible, regardless of how ef
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Funny you should mention that! In fact, I was so compelled to reply that I didn't even read your post beyond that sentence.
I hate TV ads and fast-forward through ALL of them (bless my still-chugging VCR!), the ONLY exception I make are the Apple "I'm a Mac" ads. They're simple, funny, imaginative, and just pl
Apple's move to x86 and Linux (Score:1)
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In this case the attack worked, prior to the attack I was averaging around 1,000 clicks per month legitimately and thus gaining reasonable revenues which paid for hosting, domain registration and various other services (such as occasional professional design services to help with certain things I am l
Re:Ben Edelman, there and not here! (Score:1)
of click-fraud statistics. People even have brought Google to court because of fraudulent
stats. I have adwords on my website, if I even go to my own website, and spend the day clicking on all the link and refreshing the page to get new ads, then click on those, I get some money in the bank for those clicks, at the end of the year I could maybe get 100-200$. That is if I have the time to do this, now there are people smart
Re:Ben Edelman, here (Score:5, Interesting)
Pop-up blocker (Score:5, Informative)
One key insight: Pop-up blockers don't stop spyware-originating pop-ups. Pop-up blockers stop pop-ups that load through a web browser, i.e. as a result of JavaScript code within pages users request. But pop-up blockers do nothing to stop full Windows programs (e.g. spyware) installed on users' computers.
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notifying the victim merchants (Score:2)
Of course the bigger issue extends beyond those two specific merchants. Most affiliate merchants lack the kind of tough oversight of their affiliates that would be needed to prevent these scams.
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I've also always thought that any merchant that pays for click-throughs or indirect referrals are foolish. It is just too easy to game those processes.
Here's a question or few for you (Score:3, Interesting)
How to catch rule-breakers (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead, in my experience, the only robust enforcement strategy is testing: Get copies of the spyware, browse the web on infected test PCs, and see what happens. If an affiliate's link is invoked wrongfully and unexpectedly, then investigate and take appropriate action.
Is this trivially easy? Well, no. But it's the only clear way forward. And arguably it's appropriate: Any merchant paying out $$$$$ of affiliate commissions ought to put forth reasonable effort to confirm who they're paying and what they're paying for. In few other contexts would a company have as many suppliesr, subject to as little vetting (ex ante) and supervision (ex post), as in Internet advertising.
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Answer:
By:
1: RTFA (and Mr. Edleman's reply to you question)
2: Duplicating his methodology.
If you (as a merchant) find that the same thing is happening, contact the FTC (among others), as well as a competent (and hopefully trustworthy) attorney.
It is your responsibility to ensure that your ad vendors are living up to their part of the bargain before paying them
Could advertisers catch this auditing their logs? (Score:2)
If this is the case, it seems to me the advertiser would be able to identify this fraud by auditing his own logs - looking for a non-affiliate hit followed, soon after, by an affiliate hit claiming com
Re:Could advertisers catch this auditing their log (Score:2)
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well ok not really
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The article described how, if you go to, e.g. Blockbuster's website and perform some action(such as signing up—they intend to pay legitimate advertisers who refer new customers), while having certain spyware installed, then Blockbuster is ripped off by having to pay an illegitimate advertiser, and the spyware makers benefit. You aren't affected directly in the slightest.
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Re:Thats an interisting article. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Thats an interisting article. (Score:4, Informative)
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This is a case of someone scamming legitimate affiliate programs at Blockbuster's expense.
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Re:Thats an interisting article. (Score:4, Informative)
How can Higaran's idiotic response be moderated "Insightful"? He managed to read a very clear article and come away with an interpretation that was almost completely the opposite of what it said. It does provide some insight into the sorry state of education these days, but definitely not into the topic of this post.
There is no spyware on the Blockbuster or Netflix websites.
There is spyware that may get loaded onto your computer by companies like Zango, which then intercepts your visits to Blockbuster/Netflix, and inserts a cookie that scams Blockbuster/Netflix out of commission $$.
Spyware will become clean... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Serves them right? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Serves them right? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it is frustrating. (Score:5, Interesting)
The usual responses are that "You are exaggerating the dangers", and "I have nothing of value for anyone to steal in my computer" or "it is too complex to lock the machine down" or "I dont know how to lock the machine down" or "there are millions of people who dont lock their machine down, are they all fools and are you the only smart guy out there".
Their file sharing stops working. They call the tech. Some cousin of me from India walks them step-by-step to turn off the firewall in the router so that "he can come in and fix it", turns off the firewall in the machine, turns on remote assistance, fixes something and leaves. For the tech guy the metric is "minutes to solve the problem". Staying on line to turn back all the firewalls and turning off remote-assistances "does not pay". The machine gets pwend even before he is done and he recommends wiping the hard disk and restoring, wiping out everything the customer had in the disk.
It is a torture to be the one-eyed man in the land of the blind.
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These merchants, Netflix, Blockbuster and others signed with people with very low ethical standards. These spyware vendors install software without consent, fool people, irritate people with pop-ups etc. And these companies thought that is how they should get their customers. It should not surprise anyone, least of all these merchants, that the spyware vendors use every trick in the book and then some to cheat them and charge fees and commissions. Let them go bankrupt. .
Do you really believe BlockBuster sought out a spyware company to perform advertising? If so, that would be a bombshell. A kiss of death for BlockBuster. (How could this be proven?)
I'd wager that BB and NetFlix, when deciding how to spend their advertising dollars were pitched by these "dynamic marketing companies" (aka spyware companies) about new on-line marketing and referrals plans. Once they are notified that they are in bed with spyware companies, I'd wager (am a betting man lol) that they drop
Lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas (Score:2, Insightful)
Make business arrangements with criminals and you deserve to get ripped off.
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Blockbuster didn't sign with Zango (the spyware company).
They signed with Linkshare, a reputable online advertising company.
The click gets laundered through successively less-sleazy companies on the way from the spyware-infested computer back to Blockbuster.
Now google has a till option.... (Score:5, Interesting)
If I am running a site selling certain goods, then I don't really care how many hits I get, I'm bothered about how many sales I get.
Now if google can set up an adwords system for me that does not charge per click, but instead I use their payment system as a check out and grant them a commission on refered sales (as long as they can prove that the refereal was sent via a targetted ad in the current browser session would be my condition) then they can take say 5% of the sale (on top of their normal processing comission.
Then the problem comes down to trusting google to correctly report which sales on your site are actually directly from one of their adverts and not from their main search.... however its only one company, its a large and well known company so auditing it would be a lot easier than many of the smaller more dubious companies.
Re:Now google has a till option.... (Score:5, Insightful)
There are also plenty of people that aren't interested in Google's checkout at all, and would refuse this.
If there was a simple answer, this problem would not have existed for so long.
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Google must be the only checkout system on yuor site
your site must be orientated around an instant payment system
etc
The usual clauses, nothings perfect and I wouldn't suggest this replace whats already out there, just add another option and let people choose.
Given the choice I personally would use something like this over the choice of google adwords (right now I use paypal but am considering switching to google checkout)
Just like the Mob... (Score:2)
Capital S? (Score:4, Insightful)
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From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]: "Common nouns may be capitalized when used as names for the entire class of such things." In this case, Spyware is being used as a name for an entire class of such programs, and is thus capitalized.
Re:Capital S? (Score:4, Interesting)
I do not care if the grammar nazis give me a d-, I refuse to comply.
Capital D (Score:1)
Letter grades should be capitalized: D-
That is all
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From Wikipedia: "Common nouns may be capitalized when used as names for the entire class of such things." In this case, Spyware is being used as a name for an entire class of such programs, and is thus capitalized.
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through the magic of super-lazy editing staff, doesn't become,
It's more work to add superfluous words than to just copy and paste unchanged. More work still to judiciously remove words.
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Maybe its time for a new name (Score:5, Funny)
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They could call it Digital Consumer Enablement!
Oh, wait ...
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Ewww (Score:5, Insightful)
Less outsourcing, and contracts that demand less second-degree outsourcing, would help the advertisers tremendously. I doubt that it would do much for the spyware victims, though, because there'll always be another scam right around the corner.
After working at a free newspaper for some time... (Score:3, Insightful)
Whew!!! (Score:1)
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Ticks are people too.
Heh. Online advertising. (Score:2)
Only one way to clean up their image (Score:1, Funny)