I am not on an "ethical" kick here. Like i mentioned to DH a month ago, i would rather someone email spam me then steal my traffic. At least the spammer is generating his own traffic. This isn't a try to protect the surfer campaign or your sponsor accepts questionable traffic don't use them crusade.

This is about stealing money out of my pocket and stealing my traffic. This is IMO no different then hacking my server and taking every 10th hit that comes in and directing it to your site. I am not talking about p2p traffic. I never brought up the "too much free content on the net, don't promote them" or password sites, or anything else. There is a huge difference between adware (aka Spyware) and everything else.

Bottem line. Generate your own traffic, don't steal mine. Out bid me, fine. Develop a more effective promo fine. Just earn it, don't steal it. This should be illegal and i hope the laws catch up.

Just because mainstream is doing it doesn't make it ok. I don't think it would be so hard as you think to find some good sponsors here who do not accept stolen/hijacked traffic. AFF is the one stealing it themselves, it isn't even like they are accepting stolen traffic from bad affiliates, they are going out and stealing it themselves.

So you never answered my question. You don't care about it right now because it may affect only 1% of your sales. At what point (%) is it UNacceptable for you to have money stolen from you ?

You can't separate the ethics and money issues. Since there isn't an anti-adware law in place and being enforced yet you can't call it stealing your money so what would you call it without using the word "unethical" ?

Every unethical traffic source is taking money out of people's pockets who only have honest traffic if there is such a thing.

If it's ok for me to outbid you on a major SE like iFriends does on MSN, it's ok for me to outbid you on a third party SE that supports adware too right?

Regarding the percentage at which I care, hard to put a number on it. I see my sales generally steady or increasing with my major sponsors so apparently it isn't currently having a significant effect. If that happens before a law is passed I will switch sponsors to try to improve things rather than banging my head against a brick wall as it seems you are doing now.

since everything is connected some come of way, that would make everything either good or everything bad. Is that your logic, well this search engine accepts spyware traffic, and a link list that i buy ads from is listedon that search engine so I am bad too then? It's not that black and white. That's a cop-out. That is just as bad as Lars rationalization, everyone else is doing it. SO that makes it ok for you to do ? You are trying to say it is all connected so it is all bad. Which is not true. You have to start at the source of the problem and deal with it.

You may think the efforts that are being made here by me and others are a waste of time and not worth your time. If we don't succeed at making a difference then I hope your ratios keep going good, if not, then down the road somewhere you might have wished you particiapted earlier and was a little more proactive.

The problem with this industry is there is too much here and now, I don't care about tomorrow and i only care about me attitudes....

A reply from Stacy (@clickcash)
 

I talked to Stacy, the clickcash spokesperson.

1. This is a remnant of a test they did years ago. "We terminated that relationship with Exact/180 Solutions, and have no intentions of engaging in that sort of marketing again."

2. This was keyword advertising. If a surfer searched for one of the terms, this would generate a pop under. They did not try to hijack traffic or overwrite cookies.

3. She said emphatically they they simply don't do this type of thing.

From what I understand, she's going to be replying to everyone who called or emailed. If you wanna jump on the bandwagon, [email protected]

Frankly, this has really shocked me. I thought shaving was the mortal sin of this industry, but for Cams/AFF/Various to say they're going to fuck us affiliates before anyone else gets a chance to fuck us over is probably the worst thing I've heard in almost 8 years in adult. This is worse than iBill, Xpics and any of the shit IEG used to pull.

I just can't believe AFF said " yes we do it and we will continue to do it.". They must think everyone is stupid and will forget about it because of the higher payouts and contest threads.:upsidedow

So they tried it once many years ago but didn't like it and didn't inhale. :error

Also they used the friendly happy adware that uses a popunder not the evil nasty other kind of adware.

Why would they try it in the first place if it's so bad and why would they stop? It seems to be quite profitable judging by the number of companies using it so they must have stopped due to ethical considerations. Makes perfect sense. :winkwink:

Correct. But the companies who use adware traffic are not the source of the problem. True if the adware companies had no clients they would die but going after that part of the process is not attacking the source. If I wanted to get rid of tobacco I wouldn't go around to every store that sells tobacco and ask them to stop. I would push to make it illegal to manufacture tobacco.

Also, saying we are all connected and directly or one or two steps away from supporting adware is not a cop out. You have said many times that adware affects us all. Right now at least, each of us is more involved in directly or indirectly supporting companies that use adware traffic than being adversely affected by it as affiliates.

Tobacco is grown, not manufactured.

You're right. My whole analogy falls apart now. :Oh crap

tobacco products then :thumbsup

i have nothing smart to say

This drama will go on forever

bumpity bump