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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

#91

Post by readme »

mikeash wrote: post #74
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…

I'm sure a lot of laptop computers containing screens and keyboards have been used as evidence. It may be a little too much to ask FBI agents to only take that which contains data, when it's not necessarily always completely apparent.

Indeed. Newer computers can look like a plain old monitor and have an entire system onboard. This is typically obvious when it's a mac, but would an FBI agent pick out this System76 computer as not being "just a monitor"? Who knows

(https://www.system76.com/desktops/model/sabc1)

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

#92

Post by OGinparadise »

corresation wrote: post #47
unreal37 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also tend to believe that these companies sanctioned this activity until they were against it. A year after they claim to have started investigating it, they invite one of the guys to a private dinner where he is the only non-eBay employee in attendance, and treat him like a king. Its a contradiction. Very interesting stuff. That must have been a fun forum at the time, when easy money was to be made like this. Than…

I also tend to believe that these companies sanctioned this activity until they were against it. Why? It provided absolutely no value to them. Actually worse, it cost them affiliate fees on sales that rightfully would have been affiliate fee free. There is no scenario where it makes sense that eBay (edit: wow originally wrote Amazon) would endorse this. they invite one of the guys to a private dinner where he is the…

Theory: Not eBay, eBay but maybe the affiliate managers encouraged it. Maybe they get cut based on affiliate sales so it was in their best personal interest to have as many aff sales. Downsides are plenty but only if discovered and if top eBay management didn't like it.

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

#93

Post by Dylan16807 »

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.

It's tricky, and depends on exactly how they represented their actions. They did send traffic to ebay, but it was worthless traffic.

Also, legally it's only fraud if the victim doesn't know you're lying. I'm not at all convinced that was the case here.

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

#94

Post by milesskorpen »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #93
milesskorpen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's tricky, and depends on exactly how they represented their actions. They did send traffic to ebay, but it was worthless traffic. Also, legally it's only fraud if the victim doesn't know you're lying. I'm not at all convinced that was the case here.

They _didn't_ send traffic. They just set cookies and waited for people to go to eBay who would have anyways.

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

#95

Post by Dylan16807 »

milesskorpen wrote: post #94
Dylan16807 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's tricky, and depends on exactly how they represented their actions. They did send traffic to ebay, but it was worthless traffic. Also, legally it's only fraud if the victim doesn't know you're lying. I'm not at all convinced that was the case here.

They _didn't_ send traffic. They just set cookies and waited for people to go to eBay who would have anyways.

By my reading they used iframes (or maybe img) to literally send traffic to eBay, and it was eBay's servers that set the cookie. As far as I understand it you can't set a cookie on a domain you don't control. But I admit I might be wrong, the article is confusing on the technical details.
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