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How eBay Worked With The FBI To Put Its Top Affiliate Marketers In Prison

businessinsider.com

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Re: How eBay Worked With The FBI To Put Its Top Affiliate Marketers In Prison

#11

Post by chopsueyar »

thetrumanshow wrote: post #8
ianhawes wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iframe of the affiliate link. eBay sets the required cookies.

Wait, so they just rendered an iframe of a random product on ebay that contained their affiliate information on a bunch of widgets they hosted ... and this lands you in prison? Lets imagine I publish an eBay widget (I don't) to promote products I think people should buy. Lets say the widget just renders products in my sidebar. Lets say thousands of blogs then install this. Would I be then bound for prison? I'm strugg…

I'm assuming it would be a hidden iframe and then trigger an actual click on an ebay affiliate link, so it would appear the user has clicked the link.

Your hypothetical scenario is actually showing products.

According to the article, it seems eBay's gripe was that once the cookie was placed, the transparent .gif on their homepage was never triggered, so these affiliates were not sending traffic to eBay, but randomly waiting for these eBay users to purchase something from eBay.

This method was actually used by several successful affiliate marketers, now considered "industry veterans", in the early 2000s for Amazon.com and other big affiliate marketing programs.

It would eventually get one kicked out of the affiliate program and the violator would not receive any of their commissions, but this is the first I have heard of the FBI federally prosecuting affiliates for cookie stuffing.

Re: How eBay Worked With The FBI To Put Its Top Affiliate Marketers In Prison

#12

Post by thetrumanshow »

rwmj wrote: post #5

More accurate to say to "put two fraudsters in prison". Hopefully they'll keep on putting fraudsters in prison.

I agree, but the line that defines fraud is scarily unclear, IMO.

Should the Airbnb founders be sent to prison for spoofing interest in Craigslist ads and breaking their TOS? If the consensus shifts to yes, then our industry will become a very scary place to invest time and energy.

Re: How eBay Worked With The FBI To Put Its Top Affiliate Marketers In Prison

#13

Post by belorn »

> Much of Hogan's apartment was a clutter of screens, hard drives and keyboards — which the FBI confiscated.

That must have been some very advanced and dangerous looking screens and keyboards.

Why do we still accept this kind of confiscation of unrelated goods, while throwing big objections if the police had confiscated jewelery, clothes, or anything other non-connected but expensive items? By now, for all the tons of electronic items confiscated during raids, has any single screen or keyboard ever been part of the evidence provided to a court?

Re: How eBay Worked With The FBI To Put Its Top Affiliate Marketers In Prison

#14

Post by kposehn »

thetrumanshow wrote: post #8
ianhawes wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iframe of the affiliate link. eBay sets the required cookies.

Wait, so they just rendered an iframe of a random product on ebay that contained their affiliate information on a bunch of widgets they hosted ... and this lands you in prison? Lets imagine I publish an eBay widget (I don't) to promote products I think people should buy. Lets say the widget just renders products in my sidebar. Lets say thousands of blogs then install this. Would I be then bound for prison? I'm strugg…

They were using iframes to drop cookies on visitors computers without them actually intending to go to eBay - or even being aware that they had "visited" eBay at all. This is against the ToS, but isn't necessarily a crime.

The crime was their attempts to obfuscate and hide the activity so that eBay could not legitimately tell if they were doing so against the ToS. Fraud includes intentionally deceiving someone in the context of an agreement, statement or contract (iirc). They got caught because they made a long-running habit of hiding their illicit activity to a degree which made them guilty.

Re: How eBay Worked With The FBI To Put Its Top Affiliate Marketers In Prison

#15

Post by kposehn »

"The problem with affiliate marketing is that there isn't much money in it."

A better statement would be: "The problem with the eBay affiliate program is that there isn't much money in it."

This is not a problem with affiliate marketing in general.

Re: How eBay Worked With The FBI To Put Its Top Affiliate Marketers In Prison

#16

Post by AznHisoka »

kposehn wrote: post #15

"The problem with affiliate marketing is that there isn't much money in it." A better statement would be: "The problem with the eBay affiliate program is that there isn't much money in it." This is not a problem with affiliate marketing in general.

Actually there's a bit of truth in it.

The dirty secret is that 90% of affiliate revenue is generated by coupon sites. For the most part retailers are giving away money that they probably would've generated any way w/o the affiliate.

Re: How eBay Worked With The FBI To Put Its Top Affiliate Marketers In Prison

#17

Post by smackfu »

AznHisoka wrote: post #16
kposehn wrote: post #15

"The problem with affiliate marketing is that there isn't much money in it." A better statement would be: "The problem with the eBay affiliate program is that there isn't much money in it." This is not a problem with affiliate marketing in general.

Actually there's a bit of truth in it. The dirty secret is that 90% of affiliate revenue is generated by coupon sites. For the most part retailers are giving away money that they probably would've generated any way w/o the affiliate.

Really? I would think the big dog for affiliate payments is Amazon, and they don't really have much in the way of coupons.

Re: How eBay Worked With The FBI To Put Its Top Affiliate Marketers In Prison

#18

Post by milesskorpen »

thetrumanshow wrote: post #12
rwmj wrote: post #5

More accurate to say to "put two fraudsters in prison". Hopefully they'll keep on putting fraudsters in prison.

I agree, but the line that defines fraud is scarily unclear, IMO. Should the Airbnb founders be sent to prison for spoofing interest in Craigslist ads and breaking their TOS? If the consensus shifts to yes, then our industry will become a very scary place to invest time and energy.

While that line might be vague, are you arguing that this example _isn't_ fraud? I'm sure they violated the affiliate network terms of service — which is one thing if you're an individual user, but when it's a business contract, terms become much more important. Moreover, these guys had to know they were in violation of the spirit of these programs — affiliate marketing is _marketing_, which they were doing none of.

Re: How eBay Worked With The FBI To Put Its Top Affiliate Marketers In Prison

#19

Post by milesskorpen »

AznHisoka wrote: post #16
kposehn wrote: post #15

"The problem with affiliate marketing is that there isn't much money in it." A better statement would be: "The problem with the eBay affiliate program is that there isn't much money in it." This is not a problem with affiliate marketing in general.

Actually there's a bit of truth in it. The dirty secret is that 90% of affiliate revenue is generated by coupon sites. For the most part retailers are giving away money that they probably would've generated any way w/o the affiliate.

This. There are a very small number of sites which make a lot of money (and I don't think they're just coupons ... Pinterest probably does well here). I suspect the long tail for affiliate revenue is much longer than with AdSense.

Re: How eBay Worked With The FBI To Put Its Top Affiliate Marketers In Prison

#20

Post by [deleted] »

belorn wrote: post #13

> Much of Hogan's apartment was a clutter of screens, hard drives and keyboards — which the FBI confiscated. That must have been some very advanced and dangerous looking screens and keyboards. Why do we still accept this kind of confiscation of unrelated goods, while throwing big objections if the police had confiscated jewelery, clothes, or anything other non-connected but expensive items? By now, for all the tons o…

[deleted]
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