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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

#21

Post by AznHisoka »

smackfu wrote: post #17
AznHisoka wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Amazon has a 24-hour cookie. So you get paid even if someone clicks on your link and buys something else later in the day. I wouldn't be surprised if this accounted for a huge majority of their affiliate payouts. Cases where someone buys a product directly from Amazon after reading a review are a minority, imo.

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

#23

Post by AJ007 »

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.

The dirty secret is that 90% of e-commerce affiliate revenue is generated by coupon toolbars. Its like what Shawn Hogan did, except it involves every single e-commerce affiliate program instead of just one.

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

#24

Post by AJ007 »

curiousdannii wrote: post #2

"So eBay installed a tiny “gif” file on its homepage. A gif is simply an image file. This one was so tiny no one could see it. It sat there invisibly."

I would suspect the idea started out just as one of wondering how flawed eBay's affiliate tracking system was. Then, they figure well may be I'll be able to do this a few weeks or a month, they'll kick me off and I won't get paid. But, that doesn't happen and instead commissioned account reps (I am assuming they are on commission) keep encouraging it.

A lot of things fall under wire fraud rules. A lot of very common and routine business practices qualify as wire fraud. The fact that that is the only charge is very telling.

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

#25

Post by thetrumanshow »

milesskorpen wrote: post #18
thetrumanshow wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Heh. Nope, not _arguing_ that, because arguing what constitutes fraud and what does not belongs ONLY to the administrators of said governing laws.

If I were presiding over this specific case, and had a breadth of understanding that confirmed they were cookie-stuffing beyond a doubt, I would move to convict them.

I do think the line that separates a civil matter and a criminal matter is unclear at times.

Further edit: Oh, were you asking if I thought the Airbnb behavior an example of fraud? Well, now I guess I do... based on what I read today. I still think its a civil issue, but it doesn't matter what I think. Prosecutors be prosecutin'.

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

#26

Post by celticjames »

Shocked to learn that Brian Dunning has done this. I've been listening to his Skeptoid podcast for years. I always pictured someone of modest or middle class means because he solicits donations to help keep the podcast going. I didn't think he was also making millions from fraud. Ironically, 'consumer frauds' is one of things he has listed on his website as a target of his skeptical inquiry.

Found this blog post with court documents and background: http://www.skepticalabyss.com/?p=291

EDIT: Found this old blog post by Brian Dunning: http://skeptoid.com/blog/2011/10/05/a-partial-explanation/

"Cookie stuffing refers to a web site writing a cookie to your browser without your knowledge or permission. ... It’s a scary-sounding term, but it’s fundamental to the way Internet advertising works. ... Cookie stuffing is more than just a standard practice; it’s an essential component of the mechanics of serving ads effectively."

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

#27

Post by Matsta »

Ahh this brings back some memories.

The articles mentions the guy who made the cooking stuffing software. He was pretty active on a private part of a forum I'm still part of.

Anyway eBay went after the forum as well, and promptly deleted his account and all the threads mentioning eBay. They also moved their servers offshore and deleted pretty much every thread that mentioned eBay in it.

I do remember he wrote a massive long thread about how the FBI raided his house and seized all his computers. He said the FBI agents weren't even told why they were conducting a raid on him and actually felt kind of sorry for him. He charged a pretty hefty price for the software ($500/month for the basic plan), but it was pretty advanced. They figured out that they could spoof referrers in flash, so rather then have a 1x1px image file, it was a tiny .swf file.

People were banking on that though, eBay first, then Amazon. You could buy shitty porn traffic and parked domain traffic for literally $1-2/1000 uniques visitors and stuff them all with cookies.

It was also round the same time Craigslist cracked down on affiliate marketers. People were literally getting hundreds of conversions a day on rebill offers like credit ratings and dating verification offers. One guy fled to South America so Craiglist and the FBI couldn't find him as he was literally making 6 figures a day.

I probably have said too much, but now everyone is pretty smart now. Facebook were the last ones to smarten their act up since their whole system/backend had so many loopholes in there it wasn't funny. Plus their security team only worked Monday-Friday, so if you noticed up until 2012, there would be a bunch of spam on your feed during the weekends.

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

#29

Post by rayiner »

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.

Tricking people for profit is the definition of fraud. It says a sad thing about the industry that shady practices like that are considered important enough that it would be "scary" to have to abstain from them.

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

#30

Post by DiabloD3 »

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…

Yes, this entire story makes no sense. They just attacked their own affiliate base and tried to paint it as a good thing.

Did these two people featured in the story do anything that was against US Federal law? Did they violate the eBay affiliates agreement (and that can't result in criminal charges anyhow)?

I've read through all three pages of the story twice, and all I'm seeing is eBay wanted to have their cake and eat it too. They even conspired with these two to help generate more affiliate revenue which eBay admits to.

Sounds a lot like another Aaron Schwartz-type pile of bullshit to me. eBay is going to enjoy their exodus of affiliate salesmen.

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