It’s very rare to see a CPA Network come forward and air their dirty laundry and even more rare to make public apologies when you screw up. This past week, I screwed up and I screwed up big time. Even though I had no idea this was going on before I was notified, it’s still a screw up.
Shoemoney sent me a Cease and Desist while I was at Adtech for a publisher using his image on offer landing page. I had already read about Jeremy having problems with this and I should have done a pre-emptive strike by searching the network to see if this was going on but I never even thought about it.
I immediately notified the publisher that using copyrighted images are unacceptable. Listen guys, when a network receives a cease and desist like this we have to immediately notify you of the violation. According to certain Terms of Service you can possibly be terminated from a network and a lot of times your earnings are kept by the network. There are sorts of loopholes in network Terms of Service for how you can get screwed over from your network but that does not negate the fact that using copyright images without permission is definitely wrong and can have consequences.
When a cease and desist is issued there can be all sorts of demands. I wont go public with this one because currently the image has been taken down and I have offered my cooperation into a closure of the C&D. Just know that when you use copyrighted images without permission, you risk all sorts of trouble that can come of it.
I would like to publicly apologize to Jeremy for this incident. I’ve had the priviledge of meeting Shoe in Vegas at the summit and I am a daily reader of his blog. To receive a C&D from Shoe was like a kick in the balls. However, it should have not even gotten that far and had I known that his image was being used I would have taken care of it immediately. In light of this situation as a network we are putting more focus and attention with publishers so that copyrighted images are not being used without permission.
In the light of everything, there are certain processes that sometimes have to be handled in a certain manner and I fully plan to cooperate with any more issues that are concerning to Shoemoney Media. This apology is not an attempt to worm our way out of anything that Shoe feels should be still discussed or taken care of. We will still do whatever it takes to bring closure to the situation should there be anything else but since Shoe fishes with dynamite I wanted to issue a public apology to him.
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If there ever was an epic after hours party during an event, the party coming at Adtech will probably be one that goes down in the history books. If you are not familiar with the blog PPC.BZ then you’ve seriously been living under a rock. Owned, operated and written by one of whom I consider to be one of my best online friends, (offline too, Vegas Rocked B) the blog and man behind it has a tenacity like no other to have a good time. Some think the parody on the blog is offensive. You should know that if you find written words online as offensive, then you are the type of person that is getting made fun of. However, the regulars of ppc.bz are compromised of insane animals that are likely to tear down the Cat Club and possibly proceed the Acai Berry Jello Pit themselves and duke it out.
Whatever happens, it will be quite a party.
Back To Details.
Ok so, Barman hits up Ruck and it goes something like this.
- Barman – Have you given any thought to the proposal?
- Ruck -Yes, I have B
- Barman – Ok so what you think?
- Ruck – I dont think I want to marry you
- Barman – Why not, this is bullshit
- Ruck – How about I throw some loot in for a bar tab, DJ’s, and an Acai Berry Jello Pit for “wrestling”
- Barman – Let me think about this
- Ruck – Ok
- Barman – (2 seconds later) Ok, Acai Berry Jello Pit is a go
Ok so that’s how it went. So the details are here. Being a taken man, I personally have prior engagements that wont allow me to attend but I assure you that some of the C2M guys will be gettin rowdy in there.
Special thanks to:
Nickycakes.com as he is involved in this party somehow in which I do not know but he rocks, so who cares, you will be graced with his presence so remember not to ever shower after he shakes your hand.
Firelead – If you dont know what a Firelead is it really doesnt matter. Mike is a down to earth guy and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting him in public to verify that he is NOT a serial killer. He’s a super sharp businessman and the fact he threw in also reflects the level of outstanding coolness you should give him.
EWA – Who COULDNT thank Mr. Eagle! Sry I missed you the first round bro!
Dullspace and Rob Hustle – Their raps are going to be off the chain. Sorta pissed, I am going to miss this but I am hoping some Internet Sex Rap Videos will surface after the event.
Acai Berry – We thank you for affording this party and the jello pit that you will provide for a soft wrestling experience from some of the more illustrious type people that will participate in the fighting.
Booze – We thank the booze because it will be the booze that are blamed for any stupid crap that may be performed by some of the industry affiliates.
Barman – We thank Barman for getting off his ass and making a real party. I would also like to ask that you stop proposing because it’s never going to happen.
Sign up for the PPC.BZ party so you dont miss it.
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Since moving over to the new tracking platform we have had some questions in relating to what is still staying and what is not. I wanted to highlight a few key points here to clear up any confusion. First and foremost, NOTHING is going away. Although it may be changed up a bit, nothing is leaving except that we chose to go with a more efficient tracking platform that is not near as heavily utilized as Direct Track. Nothing against Direct Track as it was a starting platform for us that we knew, understand and operated without much of a hitch. There were issues with it and some things we felt that didnt really fit our needs so we decided to make the switch. Now that we have made the switch, allow me to discuss it a bit.
First off, the new system is EXTREMELY simple. With Direct Track you had to go into the campaign level for a full description, country tartgeting, download suppression lists etc.. On the new system, this is easily done for EACH offer from the offers page. Every offer is listed into categories making it super simple to navigate to your verticals and niches and have a look at the offers.
Some affiliates prefer to login and be wowed with all kinds of (dare I say shit) that really doesnt mean anything other than to look good. Personally, all I am concerned with is the offers and the tracking. I dont make any money by staring at the latest graphics in an affiliate panel, so we chose to not go that way.
Referrals – We still offer a lifetime 2% referral. If you referral a publisher, you will earn 2% of their earnings for as long as they are a publisher with C2M. However, there are MANY abuses in a network referral system. I am not going to go into detail of how it’s carried out because it will do more harm than good. Along with referral abuse we have to deal with network fraud. So with that said, our referral program will be open to publishers but it will be on a much closer apply type basis. This will also allow us to work with our referring pubs more closely and give a much stronger focus to them.
Rewards Program – The Rewards Program is still staying. We just implemented this past month and have started processsing last months rewards as well. I’ve got a few more ideas to implement into the rewards program as well to make it even better. We are thinking of getting special cards made for each publisher and to load your Rewards balances on them each month. It works just like a credit card. We will be issuing some posts dedicated to getting feedback to find out exactly what publishers want.
Coaching Program – Yes, it is still coming. With more than we thought going on in April, I’ve personally been overwhelmed and not given it as much focus as it needs to be launched. Returning from Adtech our focus will be clear and we will be releasing it for both sides. A new forum will be launched and we will be doing away with the ever boring SMF Forum. We hope with the new forum, there will be a ton more features to utilize in the training process and forum participation.
Site Design – We will be undergoing a new site redesign. The site is much sleeker and slicker. With a new redesign, we will also be skinning the inside of the affiliate control panels to match the new site.
All of these are in production and being worked on currently. We’ll keep you updated as we move forward.
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I found some pretty good stuff over the weekend. The last Fraud Friday’s post really must have got to a few idiots. We got threatened twice with legal bullshit and even a threat against my family. Here’s what we got:
Comments:
Huang Feilong
http://www.urfinancer.com | bob.coffieled@gmail.com | 121.61.95.16fuck your asshole .ruck .and kill your all family
From Fraud Fridays – Email Cloaking Fraud, 2009/04/13 at 12:29 AM
You cant even put proper sentence structure together much less make a threat actually…threatening.
Then we have the owner of XrayEmails:
xrayemails
http://xrayemails.com | webmaster@xrayemails.com | 66.31.53.186Hi, I am the co-owner of xrayemails. I am really angry after reading your article. First of all I want to let you know, if you do not take back all the stuff you made up in the article, me and my partners holds the rights to pursue legal justice. Secondly, if you are a new comer into this industry, I will forgive you for your ignorance. Let me tell you what xrayemails is.
Xrayemails is a ptr website formed at the end of 2004. Ptr is a normal form of incentive site in the ad network, using ‘cashcrusader’ script which is common in incentive websites. The way ptr runs is, advertisers buys ads from our website, as long as the actions codes or ad content with the basic rules, we will release the ads to members. Members get rewarded for visiting ads. The rules I mentioned, basically just excludes porn, virus, anti-humanity, revenge, etc. Later while all kinds of frauds appear, we added the rule that ads with hidden iframe or something like it will not be released. Almost 90% of these websites are honest with similar rules. These honest ptr site owners are fighting frauds every day. We screen members for their honesty of their nationality, whether members use tools to click ads, whether they use fake information, whether the advertisers added inappropriate information after the ad has been released. So to say, the web owners are the first frontier against frauds.
But here you claimed, without an understanding, that our website and we are a group of frauds. Are you solely judging on our partners’ nationality being Chinese, or the domain name she registered in? If you just totally have no idea what ptr is I recommended you to wiki it. Ptr is just a platform for releasing ads, just like your affiliate programs, just more basic,more personal and much smaller. The incentive is to reward the visitors directly.
From your screenshot you say there is problem regarding the traffic. Potential traffic from emails is a way for ptr to promote called “paid-to-promote”. This is a strictly regulated way of promotion. Members generate revenue by purchasing ads and ad spaces with the ids shown in your screenshot. The actual revenue depends on the situation after visiting. To ensure the profit of the advertisers, there is strict screening of sites qualified. There is also screening for the traffic through its members. Members will be suspended once discovered of fraud traffic. I suggest you do some research about this process. There is nothing hiding in these emails. Most of ‘paid-to-promote’ traffics just came through emails.
Ptr is a very small personal business. We hate frauds more than you do. Frauds can lead to the destruction of the entire industry. I am seriously offended by your claim without even the very basic understanding. Xrayemails is a website that members all around the globe can apply. You could spend a little to register and see how the entire process is running. There are possibilities of we being abused by others, not to abuse others. If your members offer ads at our site, we will release them if their code with our requirements. How on earth do we know if their code with your requirement? We can only enforce our rules within the site, knowing what’s qualified to be released, and release those that have been paid.
I found your statement of we being just a group of domain registers are very funny. Xrayemails was first founded by and another guy, who now works for Google. He cannot continue because the situation of conduct for his current job. We changed the domain name to the current one in 2007 because the original provider went out of business. What you said to be domain registers do not exist at all. As far as I know, my partner selected a renowned company, not a single person. This provider also serves for many government agencies and business entities. Are you saying those entities that have little web ads are also frauds because they are using this provider?
Whether you want to believe these or not, it’s inappropriate to denounce other sites based on simple imagination as an account manager. If you are not willing to take back what is incorrectly stated about our website, we have no choice but to pursue legal justice. We will have adequate evidence like records of purchase, records of advertisers, records of changing domain names, and histories of ads offering, including the source of traffic and member promotion information. These will enough to prove the legitimacy of our website, your mistake and acts of vilify.
I have one suggestion for you. In the future when similar things happen, find a web owner like us and co-work. Don’t just using simple imagination and vilify. If you find someone cheating using the platform of ptr, you should expose it in the industry bbs to inform more ptr web owners, and work together to terminate such acts. Vilify is never a good move. Again if you do not withdraw what was mistakenly stated above, we will for sure seek legal justice. Screenshots have been saved to use as evidence if needed.
If you were really serious, you would have sent me a cease and desist. I’m no stranger to lawsuits. Are you? I only ask because your pathetic amateur way of legal jargon and useless intimidation made me laugh. You run a GPT side. Wow, I dont care. More importantly, I dont care how you run it. It contains a ton of frauders that we have personally canned. I encourage you to do your best to get this post to come down. You will find out just how much industry experience I truly do have when you give it a go. When all the “evidence” and legal crap you speak of reaches me, it will go up for all to see as well. Every note will be documented. So take a long hard look at yourself before making a rash decision. Chief.
Ah yes, we know now have CEO Jeff from Gold-Domains. Hi Jeff. Here’s Jeff’s email to me:
Dear Sir/Madam,
One of your articles (http://www.convert2media.com/blog/2009/04/10/fraud-fridays-email-cloaking-fraud/) posted on your website came to our attention. We don’t know how you drew the conclusions regarding Gold-Domain. But we have zero tolerance of fraud and we are keeping fighting against fraud actively all the time. We focus on providing domain registration service and value-add products related to domain name. We’ve never and will never hire anybody to do anything offending laws. The domain name mentioned in your article is owned by one of our customers. We are not responsible for the usage of this domain. If you think it involves any illegal actions, you are more than welcome to file a complaint with us or ICANN.In short, your comments about Gold-Domain in this article is totally twisty and misleading, which hurts our reputation in the industry seriously. We urge you to remove all comments about Gold-Domain ASAP. Failure to do so may result in a law suit!Regards,JeffCEO of Gold-Domain
Since I am so Professional, I gave Jeff a Professional response:
Ruck C2M
to Gold-Domain, I.Reply
Jeff,
Go Fuck Yourself.
Sincerely,
Ruck
C.E.O. Convert2Media
Look’s like the pot is starting to stir. If you find yourself being targeted in this mess, I might suggest you seek proper legal counsel so that you learn the proper logistics for taking content off the web.
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Today’s Fraud Friday installment brings to light quite possible a semi retarded china man. I only say slightly retarded because if he was fully retarded, he wouldnt be able to pull this off. Unfortunately for the industry he is only partially retarded and putting the absolute hammer down with his crew on credit card offers. He is highly sophisticated with multiple companies, aliases and a boatload of websites. The man’s name is Huang Feilong and despite what he might say, he is completely full of shit.
Who knows who helps him here. The method known is that hired actors phone into networks for account approvals. These hired actors could quite possibly be some of your best Search Marketing, Email or any other marketing method type of publisher. Yes, it’s a sick reality. Unfortunately, most networks that these publishers work with either dont know or they actually nest these publishers. We may get into that later. It hasnt been decided whether or not to get into another networks business yet or not. Preferably, I would much rather focus on the fraud aspect here and hope that networks do the right thing.
Anyway…
The method works that a highly educated publisher is hired to phone into the network. I really dont care how good you think your prescreen methods are, they’ve gotten past us, they certainly have gotten past you. The domain to check for is: xrayemails.com
This domain comes to the industry from an actual domain registrar that a frauding organization owns. I’ve said that these organizations are highly organized and hire actors (actual publishers) along with a domain registrar owned by the frauding organization only solidifies that. They have thousands of domains with thousands of websites built at their disposal to be used. We can cover that later. Let’s talk about xrayemails.
Xrayemails.com serves as a cloak for fraud. Typically you will notice this in your referrers. The referrers are designed to full affiliate managers into thinking offers are being emailed. Example:
The first website listed in the referrals is the site the frauding applicant used to sign up. The other red lines are indicators of other profiles and/or people that are involved or used to sign up for the offers. This basic common stupidity and really easy to figure out. I’m surprised we have not seen something smarter than this considering the amount of resources the fraudsters have at their disposal. There are many things regarding stupidity that can be said on their behalf but we can continue that later.
To the common affiliate manager, this looks like common referrer data from an emailer or some other legit form of refferer data. It simply is not. This site is owned by frauding organization that has their own domain registrar. As if the sites these morons built weren’t bad enough, they also copy exisiting sites and businesses online. You can see that clearly here where Huang Feilong got caught in that very act.
Be on the lookout, if this referring data is coming to you, your being frauded. Take a look at the application of the perp doing it. I bet it’s spectacular and you even called this affiliate. In other news we have more freelance job postings this week looking for CPA Network Approvals. We have tightened our approvals and security even more because we are specifically targeted on this list:
