A new wave of fraud and paranoia are upon us. I caught a thread the other day talking about CpaShine.com spamming the Wickedfire forum for signups. In good fashion the thread was started by one of the morons from the company who was quickly banned. I quickly quipped that it was most likely a chinese network and Steve from Maxbounty (WTF Ruck links to a competitor? Steve’s awesome in my book). Anyway, Steve quickly posted the whois details on the domain:
Registrant:
ruizhi zhang
tangxia tanglong dong lu 57#
dongguan, guangdong 523710
ChinaDomain Name: CPASHINE.COM
Created on: 17-Jun-09
Expires on: 17-Jun-11
Last Updated on: 17-Jun-09Administrative Contact:
zhang, ruizhi bigo808@hotmail.com
tangxia tanglong dong lu 57#
dongguan, guangdong 523710
China
08687986221 Fax –Technical Contact:
zhang, ruizhi bigo808@hotmail.com
tangxia tanglong dong lu 57#
dongguan, guangdong 523710
China
08687986221 Fax –Domain servers in listed order:
NS37.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
NS38.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
Well that’s just awesome. I already know of a few more out there but now this situation is going to spin virally out of control. If you have read this category of the blog then you understand the sophistication these people will go to fraud a network. However fraud ALWAYS evolves and this coming year it’s scary to think how many advertisers are going to get their asses handed to them. With DirectTrack ANY network can share and receive offers and cross promote them and a lot of these chinese networks have interpreters to help them negotiate with advertisers and other networks.
What I do know is to stay away from CpaShine like it was the plague.
3 Comments Received
October 17th, 2009 @10:39 am
So the chinkers are setting up networks and then just not paying folks?
October 17th, 2009 @3:25 pm
Well I couldnt say for sure without signing up and trying them out which is what we are probably going to do in some free time. We like to mess with them a lot. BTW - This post got a threat sent to me yesterday. They will allow all kinds of fraud to join the network, then not pay anyone out and whatever they make is profit to them.
October 22nd, 2009 @12:59 pm
Thanks for the kind words Ruck.
Thankfully these “networks” are easy enough to spot, but my guess is they’ll get better hiding themselves as they go along. I think there are two ways they can pretty much be stopped dead in their tracks, but it would take a change of mindset that I’m not sure would be accepted.
First, merchants will have to do more due diligence on who they choose to work with. Ask for and check references, use google to find some history on their potential partners, and keep an eye out for anything that might seem sketchy.
Second, networks have to stop allowing just anyone to broker their offers publically. The public rebrokering of offers between networks is a huge enabler of fraud in this industry. Once an affiliate is booted from a network, even if they’re put on a merchant’s blacklist, it’s easy to run the campaign again simply by finding a place where the network doesn’t deal directly with the merchant. Sure, they’ll get a lower payout, but getting $25 for a fraud Acai lead is still better than getting $0.
Accomplishing this will take a change in the current mindset of “get me volume and get it now”. While it is great to see volume quickly, all too often the goal of quick volume blinds merchants/networks to the problems that come with that quick volume. While thinking longer term might not give them the instant results they seek, I firmly believe it will allow them to remain in business, and profitable, for a much longer time.
Thinking longer term won’t just deal with the Chinese fraudsters, it’ll also help deal with the dozen of other blackhat methods out there right now that are delivering zero quality leads to merchants.
DISCLAIMER: I’m not saying all merchants/networks operate this way. But there are certainly enough that this is a real issue.
Leave A Reply