Verotel Is Afraid Of StatsRemote
 

Got an interesting little email from Verotel today. Apparently they became aware that my statsremote is bombarding their server with an ungodly 16-52 queries per day total for the two affiliate accounts I have over there. I have been warned that any continuance of this veritable DDOS attack will result in the suspension of my account.

I'm not even pissed off here, just a bit disgusted. I genuinely find it just a little bit sad.


Since this is actually news for all StatsRemote users, I figure it bears sharing.

> Dear Jeff,
>
> ( Verotel ID: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX ),
>
> It has come to our attention that you are using the services of
> www.statsremote.com to interpret your sales statistics.
>
> We have also noticed that your statsremote client is sending a total of 52
> requests to our controlcenter on a daily basis. These requests need to be
> reduced to one request per day.
> The data you are trying to retrieve gets updated only once a day, so
> multiple requests serve no purpose and put an unnecessary strain on our
> database.
>
> Please re-configure your statsremote client to update your statistics once
> a day as soon as possible.
>
> Please note that any account continuing to send multiple requests to our
> control center after 18-Jan-2006 via statsremote, runs the risk of
> immediate suspension.
>
>
> Kind Regards,
> Verotel Merchant Services
>
>



My Response:

Dear Verotel Merchant Services,

I have received your email regarding statsremote. It frankly amazes me that a billing company the size of Verotel, which must easily handle millions of database queries an hour, is so concerned about 52 database queries per day.

In fact, since I have two accounts checked by StatsRemote and they update every half hour (when SR is running, which is rarely more than 8 hours per day), you should be seeing an average of a whopping 16 queries per day or so. None of the 60 or so sponsors that I actively promote seem to have any problems handling this "strain".

It also surprises me that a company whose revenue is largely derived from affiliate sales would be so disturbed by a tool used by professional affiliate webmasters to manage their statistics. In fact, banning use of statsremote on Verotel accounts altogether is an interesting move. That is effectively what you're doing, since I would have to change a global setting for how often stats update; and I don't see myself or most other webmasters changing the way we interact with our businesses in order to comply with the network inadequacies of a third party processor.

I sincerely apologize for creating such a strain on your network. I have deleted my Verotel accounts from StatsRemote, so you won't be seeing any more queries from me. I had no idea that your network was so fragile, and I will make sure that I don't burden it with any more traffic than I already do.


Sincerely,

Jeff/MadMax

Come on man - stop it - I have to go make a cup of tea waiting for my Verotel stats to load! And you're the reason LOL

lol....Im still waiting for mine to load from last year! Actually most of the time I I always get time outs or or message saying stats were not found or unavailable (its been that way for a couple years).

I've dropped verotel ....

Quite a few people received this email today and I'm sorry for the trouble. Usually companies contact us if there's a problem. Not in this case though :(

We disabled Verotel for now and we will change the routine for the next update.

BTW you can set each sponsor to a different checking interval. Just right click on a sponsor, select 'Properties' and change the 'Time Interval'.

Good to know JB. Must be an update since I started using the program. Damned features sneaking in on me :)

Just so you know, I love statsremote. It's Verotel that's in question here :D

Every 20 minutes isn't exactly a DOS attack but 10,000 webmasters checking every 20 minutes could easily strain a lot of systems. It sounds like JB is working the correct technical solution.

Yeah I got that email too, but its for some of my sites that use them .. not for an affiliate account. I wonder if they would start actually canning accounts who continued to send regular statsremote requests ?

Jup I got that email as well. As I have a site processing through them myself, I dropped them from statsremote. It's hard enough to get decent 3rd party processing these days, with out them canning you for using other "software".

-N

I would quit Verotel.

I've avoided Verotel affiliate programs for a number of reasons. Looks like I can add one more to the list.

P.S. JB, you guys do great work. StatsRemote ROCKS!

No comments on Verotel
My lawyers told me to do so.

lol word. Rarely does a DDOS come from one machine. And being they know who it's comming from, I would not state it's an attack. Now if it came from China I would be concerned.
Its just really funny cause I think even a MS Access DB could handle that load. lol.

Never had much luck with programs that used Verotel, as far as making sales, so dont use them.

ronnie

Note that Verotel didn't call it a DDOS, I was just being an irritated wise ass :D

Just a quick update: We just released a StatsRemote update and everything should be fine now.

From a business standpoint, that was a very poor decision by Veretol

Any processor that makes CCBIll look progressive and forward really isn't worth my time or money :)

I got the same letter. (In fact I got 4 of them.)
As foolish as it seemed I just changed the time to once a day. No big deal really.

Verowho? If I think a sponsor is good enough to promote I'll email them and ask them to let me know when they get ccbill.:D

let me know if anyone wants a direct merchant account...

|spam| is doing very well

:)

:) lol

Thanks JB for the update! |thumb Would you send me your contact info for the future. Also could you put the same blurb of text under our name on your webpage. TIA.

For those of you who think we're the only billing company that doesn't appreciate checking your stats every 15 minutes:

CC Bill Affiliates
Epoch Affiliates

Dude - do something about your speed - on both the wm admin and join pages - they move like mollasses...

I (as well as our network admins) are ware of the wm admin and they're working on speeding it up but I'm not having any problems with the join pages loading and I'm accessing from a remote location. |huh