Give me an email address that works Murray and I'll forward it to you now.

WRONG!!! It simply proves that the person that truly is responsible had visited the site recently via one of SheepGuy's reseller links and had a cookie set in their browser. At that point returning to the site directly would have still credited any sales to the saved referral code.

That sure looks to me like asking SheepGuy to prove you wrong. |crazy|

This whole thing makes no sense. If a webmaster was going to go to the trouble to make fraudulent sales under their own referral code, why do so on a revshare program with a max sale of $29.95?

5 x $29.95 x 60% = $89.85. For an established webmaster, that's chump change.

Funny. In the last 10 years in this biz I have made 1 enemy. A Swiss fellow who stole the design and images from a few of my sites way back in '99. That situation was resolved shortly after it was discovered, and I haven't heard from the guy since. Since then, I really can't recall anyone in the biz being pissed off at me. At least not enough to steal credit cards and try to frame me with a pissant sponsor like the one you represent.

A nice grasp at straws on your part, but wouldn't it be easier to admit that you fucked up? Not that it would necessarily be enough at this point since I'm still not sure what economic damage your reckless accusations have caused me, if any, but I'll be looking into that.

Keep talking, keep slandering me. I'm beyond being pissed off now, I'm enjoying watching you dig yourself deeper into a legal shithole.

I'm not yet convinced I have fucked up.

You're all acting under the assumption that I knew that pmb16985 was an established webmaster to whom that money would be chump change. Wrong.

THIS HAS BEEN DONE IN THIS EXACT SAME WAY BEFORE. FRAUDSTERS TARGET RECURRING PROGRAMS BECAUSE OF THAT EXACT ASSUMPTION, THAT WE WILL NOT BE SUSPICIOUS BASED ON THE SEEMINGLY SMALL EARNINGS. TO SOME PEOPLE THAT IS NOT A SMALL AMOUNT OF MONEY. IN FACT, DUPLICATED OVER MANY PROGRAMS IT CAN REALLY ADD UP.

To us, pmb16985 was a webmaster who had signed up with us earlier this year and sent less than 3000 unique hits to the program. This does not scream established webmaster.

I'm leaving this in Paycom's hands and will wait to hear what their investigations reveal.

And Toby...we don't use cookies.

Exactly. Another reason why this is so infuriatingly stupid.
What kind of a moron would I be to risk 10 years of full-time self employment in a biz where your reputation is everything, for peanuts |huh
Fuck, if I was that stupid I'd have to go out and get a real job, and I really couldn't handle the idea of a boss. I'm just not made for that anymore.

Ahhh, so I won't get credit for any surfers that return and buy within a few days unless they bookmark a link that has my referral code. That's good to know. |banghead|

And you also won't lose sales because they visit another webmasters site before yours, click on their referral code and have their cookie already in their system when they click on your referral code.

It's called swings and roundabouts...

Thanks for the recipt Lisa, hope we can get this sorted out soon

Lisa, I can see how things must have looked from your end, and I can see your need to protect your billing system. All we're saying is that maybe you should do that little bit of investigating on your part, perhaps even disabling a webmaster's account while doing so, rather than labeling them as fraud and raising who knows which flags all over CCBill for it. If that flag is just within your own program and does not affect a webmaster's standing through out CCBill, that would be one thing btw. I am still not clear as to whether these things get logged on one's record in CCBill.

Useless Warrior here presented a most plausible theory, whereas Sheepguy's referrer ID comes as number 1 in Google search results for your site. Therefore, if anyone was trying to breach your security systems with stolen CC's using Google search for it (as your own logs indicate was the case) they are more than likely to be doing so using Sheepguy's codes, simply because he was doing better SEO than you guys.

It's not about knowing Sheepguy or realizing in advance whether this was an experienced webmaster or not. Now, I have not run a paysite or a program before, but wouldn't this kind of procedure be good: first cancel the transactions and suspend the webmaster's account for 48 hours or something, then contact them and tell them there is suspected fraud. If they are cheaters, I doubt that they'll bother denying it or even getting back to you. One thing is certain, they will not be trying it again with you guys. If on the other hand, you are dealing with an honest webmaster, you might just be able to get some credentials for them from other sponsors maybe, or from webmasters boards, and stop short of flagging their name for fraud in the system.

Again, this isn't about Sheepguy, to me (much as I love you, man!). It's about something that could happen to any honest working webmaster.

BTW. just because you've seen this 15 times before doesn't even mean they were all cheaters. Some of them could have been honest webmasters who just figured it would be easier to drop your links and forget all about it. And even if they were all cheaters, obviously it doesn't prove that the next one is a cheater as well. I'm saying obviously, because I think it should be clear even to you by now, that in this very particular case, you've hit on someone that is a totally honest webmaster.

Huh?

That's something I've NEVER seen happen. And if it had, there'd have been a big stink on the boards.

Nice try, but I'm not buying it as a "benefit" of not using cookies to credit return surfers to the originating affiliate.

Maybe the fact that you are taking youre buiseness partners seriously?
You are not doing affiliates a favour to let them promote youre program.
It is a 2 way buiseness, so a 2 way communication should be in place.
To assume that any affiliate/webmaster is fraudelent every time something happens, without even trying to investigate or communicate, is like shooting yourself with a silverbullet in the ass.

If they were attempting to breach site security, don't you think that perhaps they might have entered the members area at least once?

Somehow I don't think that's it...

And Toby, that is a known side effect of using cookies. It's one of the reasons some programs/webmasters prefer cookies and also one of the reasons that some dislike them intently.

Their perceived benefits to some people are a perceived downfall to others.

OH BULLSHIT! I didn't just fall off the turnip truck yesterday. In fact I have a bachelors degree in Comp Sci and fully understand how cookies function. If that is a "known side effect", then it's due to errors in the coding.

CCBill has been doing this for MANY years and I've yet to see anyone post a complaint that an existing cookie is overriding a current referral code. It's something that is not that difficult to detect.

That sounds a typical trick done by carders for password sharing.
For someone that claims so much experience you come across as being very naive.
You've now questioned the ethics of all programs as i wonder how many other honest webmasters have been victimised by unfounded claims of fraud.
Without any investigation whatsoever you've labeled the guy a criminal.
Judging by the poor conversion ratios, can you really afford to be this confident?

Huh? No thanks. This is prompting another thread.

Hiya Lisa :)

I know you've been in the business a long time, and you're following what you believe are the correct procedures as you deal with this issue. And I appreciate that you're continuing to talk with us here on the board about it.

So I just want to suggest that you take a couple of steps back and consider viewing this thread from a completely different perspective. Try looking at it as suggestions being made by affiliates on how they wish an affiliate program would handle things when something like this happens.

Sure, the tendency is always to set things up to protect against the many 'bad guys' who are constantly trying to find ways to steal from you or damage your program and/or its processing capabilities. But as someone who does run a program, I'm suggesting that a more personal approach to handling something like this could have a lot of value to you.

We've found that most of the bad guys will go away once you contact them and tell them what you suspect, while the good guys will take objection to any such suspicion and go out of their way to prove their good intentions. The experienced bad guys have learned there's not enough profit in arguing after being identified, so they mostly just vanish.

Of course you want to protect your processing, and there's no reason not to suspend an account while investigating. But the main idea is to contact the affiliate webmaster to let them know the account has been temporarily suspended because of suspicious activity. If a webmaster doesn't respond to repeated messages that all signups are being refunded (when applicable), you can pretty much assume that was a bad guy and cancel the account completely.

There's definitely more than one way those transactions could have wound up being posted against a webmaster's affiliate account. And regardless of what your statistics may show, it's almost always better to give your affiliates the benefit of the doubt until you're really sure.

Simon


P.S. This post is meant to be taken as an 'in general' suggestion and not so much about the particular webmaster involved here.

P.P.S. We do use cookies for tracking and the standard thing is that the most recent cookie overwrites the existing cookie if there is one. Our cookies last just under 9 months if nothing overwrites them.

P.P.P.S. That said, I do want to add that I stand with everyone else here who's posted to say they don't believe SheepGuy would have done anything to defraud your or any other program.

These threads are great! Not only for their entertainment value but more importantly because you learn which sponsors you don't want to sign up to or promote EVER!

I can't even believe that a sponsor would just cancel an account as fraud without first contacting the webmaster involved! Un-fucking-believable!

The cheaters do spoil things for the rest of us but we still expect sponsors to make an attempt to clear it up with the webmaster first. As tigermom says if the webmaster is a fraud he won't try to clear up his name.

I can't believe that Lisa at Pornmegabucks has still not changed her position in this thread given all the webmasters that have stood up for Sheepguy and even Useless' Google research!

Just think of all those potential pornmegabucks promoters that will go to the message boards to search about Porn Mega Bucks before signing up... not after reading this thread!

A few months ago one of our main sponsors made a complete ass of himself here calling out a webmaster that as far as we could see didn't deserve that kind of treatment. Well we dropped that program immediately and I will never make another gallery or free site for his program nor will I ever actively promote it again.

Sponsors need to have respect for us honest webmasters, we spend everyday promoting your smut and if something "fishy" happens with our affiliate account the least we deserve is an email before being canceled as a fraud!

DAMN!!!

The main problem here seems to me to be PornMegaBuck's attitude to affiliate webmasters, accusing a wm of fraud without any communication and secondly Lisa's arrogant attitude in addressing the issue here, she just doesn't get that their could have been a better way to deal with the matter. |crazy|

You say that you have seen this type of transaction 15 times in the past 6 years, which I don't think is that many given the volumes of transactions that are processed, so in general I think it is better to assume that the wm you are dealing with is honest.

Guess what, I'll never sign up with this bunch of clowns and I am sure there are dozens of webmasters who feel the same way.

Sheepguy is a respected and well liked webmaster and I don't believe that he would engage in fraudulent transactions.|thumb

Whenever I'm looking at program and thinking of signing up, I usually come over here and do a search to see what experiences other folks have had with the program. Anyone else do the same?

Anyone want to venture a guess how much Lisa has cost her company in the name of "protecting" it?

After further investigation, and consultation both with my boss and Paycom, we can find no evidence linking Sheepguy to the fraudulent signups put through under his reseller code.

Tho the signups were most definitely fraudulent, it seems that it is possible that Sheepguy was in fact the unwitting victim of someone with a batch of stolen credit cards.

Although I acted in good faith based on both the evidence before me, and my past experience with cases just like this, I accept that this time I got it very wrong.

I now know that although on the surface it appeared like a clear case of webmaster fraud, there is now something else to take into consideration when investigating cases like this, something that was not, in my experience, an issue previously.

I apologise unreservedly to Sheepguy for any distress my actions may have caused him.

As a gesture of conciliation, when reinstating his account I have also raised his payout to 70%, an action I realise is most likely futile as he is unlikely to ever send us a hit again, however it has been done.

Again, my wholehearted apology for the understandable distress this episode has caused.

Am I the only one concerned by this?

If the other 15 "fraudsters" were given the same courtesy (or lack thereof), who's to say which if any of them were really attempting fraud?

That's all very well, but until I recieve assurances from CCBill and Paycom that there is no black mark beside my name caused by your company, well, I'll still be talking to my lawyer on Tuesday.

Thanks you for reinstating my account, the stats will come in handy helping me to ensure that I have taken down all of your links and won't accidentally send some hits your way.

No fucking shit!

How easy it would be to bring down a webmaster by using stolen credit cards against his or her account.
Or atleast with incompetent sponsors like yours.

Sheepguys being very reasonable i think as i'd of slapped a lible case on your arse within 24hrs.

..hope it all works out in your best interest, you're a good man!

Lisa it takes a big person to openly applogize like you just did
your stock just went up a point or two in my book

You are a class act for doing the right thing. |thumb

I reckon he should atleast get a blowjob for the trouble.

And if not, then i'd be happy to accept one on his behalf. |thumb

Yes we agree with Tommy.

Maybe, with a bit of luck, some good can come from all this.

B.

why are people being so nice in the last 3 or so posts?? WTF she was a bitch and overreacted so she appologized but who cares, this is how they do business, why be all nice just because she got cornered.

Maybe she called someone bro and bought them a drink at a show lol :D

I agree it took guts (or more likely a yelling at from her boss) to apologise, but it does not alter the original situation. If I poked you in the eye with a sharp stick, then when you told everyone what I had done, I said "sorry" to you, would you be happy with me?

It's amazing this got drug out so far. Yes sheepguy brought it up, but it could have been and should have been taken into private conversation right away. The damage is done, little late now. Like ecchi said, sorry doesn't do a whole lot of good now. It's great sheepguys rep is in tact, to bad PMB couldn't say the same.

Sure my little bit of traffic won't be missed.

Mostly I just feel sorry for Sheepguy. 10 years in the business and he still hasn't heard of proxies. He just goes straight in there, signs up 5 times in a row with the same IP and wait for that sweet cash. Doofus!

Oh, that was sarcasm by the way. But I sure do hope programs have more advanced anti-fraud protection than this, or you'll end up only catching the complete idots or the (as in this case) innocent.

Wow. No kidding? Why did you not take Tommy's advise early on? Now you have really done a number on your program. Maybe you should think about a new position, I am not so sure public relations is what you should be doing over there. Just a thought and suggestion.

It's a start, but you went way too far and will never see any traffic from my sites. |thumb

|newbie|

Seriously... I wonder how many other programs follow a similiar anti-webmaster logic?

In all fairness...I doubt Bill yelled at Lisa. It was probably the other way around.

There was no yelling involved, at all.

Just a realisation by me that I'd fucked up, and a desire to do whatever I could to fix it.

I realise that not every mistake we make can be completely erased, but in this instance, everything that was within my power to do, has been done.

Hand on heart - no-one has made a fuck up? Thats what makes us people right? And what sets certain people from certain people? The willingness to apologise for those fuck ups, surely?

Yeah, I watched this unfold, and thought to myself sheesh (insert other stuff here), but y'know, if we fuck up, we either deny deny deny, or we hold our hands up - no matter how long it takes us to see that we may have been wrong. Sheepguy - you are a top, top man, for sure, no doubt, just one thing - don't let being bitter guide your judgement :) Be bitter, by all means, that's what makes the world go round! But when all is said and done, sometimes it's pretty good to just say: ahhh..... fuck it :)

And I say the above on the premise ccbill etc don't penalise you - which I don't think they will tbh :-)

I'm not bitter, but I have talked to my lawyer and he is willing to take on my case on a commission basis.
I'm not as eager as he is, but I will do it if this has cost me money.

PMB could be proactive on this by sending an email to Paycom and CCBill assuring them that I am not in any way guilty of fraud, and requesting that any black marks be removed from my name.
cc'ing me on the emails back and forth would be a very good idea.
If I am convinced that this has not cost me money I will let it rest. But since I have had no sales or rebills from CCBill since this fiasco started it will take some convincing.

I have no idea what the law is in Canada, but in the UK CCBill would have had to notify the credit agencies instantly, and the black mark could not be removed FOR ANY REASON for 6 years. Hopefully this is not the same where you live, but I would check your own credit references in a month or so, to be sure.