Will76 I'm glad to see someone with your attitude in this industry. I have been sooooo involved in this fight in the last few years! I repeat myself until I'm blue in the face but I don't care because if only one sponsor/mainstream merchant goes clean again or understands spyware enough to recognize it and get rid of it, it's well worth my time.
Most sponsors I've contacted in the past have told me that they do not allow spyware advertising of their programs yet ALL of them were targeted. Unfortunately, only a handful have something in their TOS to this effect.
Some have taken quick action, others have ignored the problem. For many, it's because they just don't understand what it does and how it works. Others just don't give a shit where the sales come from and won't do a thing about it.
It is up to us to educate them on the problem. Many large companies in mainstream are slowly leaving the adware world to come clean. Who wants their brand associated with computer problems??
But in porn or adult in general, it's a different story. I have never seen so many affiliate managers who just didn't know about this or understand the magnitude of this problem. They won't learn this on their own if they're never told there is a problem with their program.
And doing test sales on a CLEAN computer and saying it tracked and everything is fine is useless! All it proves is that tracking works, that's all. Sponsors that come up with this reasoning make me bang my head against the wall.
Those who promote pay-per-install programs like zangocash need to have their heads examined. Because that 40 cents is all they're ever going to see from that visitor. If you get 30K per day and you infect every one of them, NO ONE will make money with them in the future, including YOU.
CoolWebSearch is another huge one in porn. Just do a quick search on that one and see what it does to a computer...
Do you do banking online? Do you ever use a credit card online?
Most people are just plain ignorant about this stuff. Once they realize that they're also shooting themselves in the foot, the light comes on.
Don't forget that many sponsors/mainstream merchants advertise via spyware as well. Maybe they just think that by stealing affiliate sales it makes the payouts less painful when they do have to pay them.
Missie