Stay away from SI!!! [Archive]

ebird

January 15th, 2002, 17:40

Hi all,

This is about the ridiculous business model from popuptraffic.com, which is part of SI (www.standardinternet.com)

I used popuptraffic from October 2001 and I earned more than $80 in November, and then more than $100 in December 2001.

This is what happened.

According to the schedule, they should mail the check to me by the mid dec. 2001. I still haven't got the check last week, so I wrote to ask popuptraffic to check the status for me. I was so surprised to find that my account was deleted yesterday and got a reply from Tony (from popuptraffic) telling me my account was deleted because all the traffic was from China.

I was very angry and felt being cheated.
1. According to the webtrendslive, more than half of the traffic was from North America. Even if popuptraffic don't count the traffic from China, they should count the traffic from the other countries, like Canada and US. Why my whole account was deleted?
2. It was a lie from popuptraffic that all my traffic was from China. I used to have zoneedit's service to redirect my domain to an IP, and as you may or may not know, zoneedit's service was blocked by China Telecom, which means whoever reached my site, most of them were not from China.
3. Why they didn't tell me earlier???!!! According to the schedule, they should mail me the check by the mid December, which also means they had the excuse to delete my account at that time. But they didn't do anything but let the banners popped up on my web, until I asked for my status last week.

I think popuptraffic delibrately planned to use my site to generate money for them, even they know they will delete my account later.

I posted the problem at its own forum, and my post got deleted within minutes, I posted again, they deleted again. I asked why they deleted my post and why they are afraid of the truth to be heard, they deleted my post and delete my account at the forum.

It's not an honest way to do business!!! I trusted it, so I didn't make any copies. Now everything is gone and they don't reply my messages anymore.

I think they are cheating people and I am asking for your guys' opinions.
1. Is there any way to get the money back?
2. Besides reporting it to BBB, what other busienss department can I report this problem?
3. What are the websites and forums that people diccuss the online ads? I would like to spread the word there.

Thank you very much for the help!

By the way, my web is about the smilies and avatar collections. I am trying to re-do the site, so it's just a plain web now.
www.hiforums.com.

Jan

January 15th, 2002, 18:13

You can post an official complaint here (in a new thread) using the guidelines set out by Peo http://www.freewebspace.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9856

I am sure a rep of SI will address the issue in due course then.

ebird

January 15th, 2002, 18:49

Thanks. I will modify my original post.

Jan

January 15th, 2002, 18:58

No, I suggest you remove most from your original post and start a new thread which is set out as in the guidelines.

Matt

January 15th, 2002, 19:08

Greetings,

Many people claim to have had bad run ins with SI, while 10 fold more are always ready to back SI up.

Adbility.com has a review of Standard Internet which is not entirely favourable. You might want to review that.

As per #2 and #2 of your second list of questions:

2. There are a few places you can go to, besides the BBB, to voice your concerns.

- A forum like this. Although most forums won't tolerate it, FWS actually allows you to post a complaint.
- AdSense.org (a site run by me, approach with extreme prejudice, as Peo would likely say) takes investigations if you're willing to go to the effort to properly put together a Claim Portfolio.

Farewell,

<<< mod edit >>> some parts of this message have been removed for abuse /Peo

Robert from SI

January 15th, 2002, 20:33

Hello,

Mr. Song Chen has left out some relevant information.

-Mr. Chen lives in China and asked SI to change his address to a drop box in California. (25XXX Industrial Blvd. APT. Z 2309)

-The admin asked Mr. Chen for a USA Social Security Number (as required by USA law) and Mr. Chen provided an fake SSN.

-The admin checked Mr. Chen's account and found approximately half of the traffic coming from: http://www.hiforums.com/vb.html and the other half coming from http://www.ChineseNet.net. It is doubtful that either of these pages (particularly the 2nd page, since it's blank) get the quantity of unique visitors daily to accumulate the earnings shown on the account.

-At the same time is was discovered that all (100%) of Mr. Chens traffic was from open proxys in China.

-Mr. Chen was "running" our pop-behind program, of which 100% of the inventory goes to our in-house CPA program, CellularPhones.com. There is no benefit whatsoever to SI in keeping Mr. Chen's "traffic".

The admin correctly terminated the account for fraud and notified Mr. Chen of said termination.

ebird

January 15th, 2002, 21:44

I can't believe how stupid you are, Robert!

1. I am living in California, and my first address with SI in in another city of California. I moved the the new address in October 2001 and of course I asked SI to change the address for me.

2. The SSN I provide is a real one. Please tell me why you think it's a fake.

3. hiforums.com provides the avatars and smilies for people to use in different forums, of course people check what I have there.
I just moved my site to cyberwings and I want to redesign the whole site. More content will be added. Feel free to check it at http://hiforums.com/ I asked people at webhostingtalk.com to check the connectivity with cyberwings and I told them I was thinking of redesigning the whole site and more contents would be added later. I just got one professional who would do customized avatars for me for free.

4. Regarding Chinesenet.net, right now I am not sure what forum scripts to use. if you want, check chinesenet.net/forums and http://chinesenet.net/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi. Before I decide what to use, I prefer a black page. What's wrong with this? This is a recent change.

Now SI guy,

Would you please when did you know all those informaiton?
I belive you knew it since mid December last year, right? Because that's the time you need to send me the check. Why you didn't delete my account at that time? You simply didn't delete it because you still wanted to use my site to generate money for you.

Why you didn't post this kind of reply at your own forum and let your forum visitors know what si had done. You simply deleted my posts and my account. It seems to me that you are afraid that the truth would be heard.

By the way, if you want, call me directly to check whether I am in US or China. Then you will see how ridiculous you are.

Hi Jan,

Because of Robert, I don't think I need to modify anything anymore. Thanks.

Matt, Thanks. I will visit all those forums to spread the word and seeking advices and help.

Robert from SI

January 15th, 2002, 21:48

You are correct about one thing.........I am very stupid. :)

ebird

January 15th, 2002, 21:51

I just changed the "si guy" to Robert. and you admitted you are stupid. That's very good.

Do you dare to answer my questions?

Robert from SI

January 15th, 2002, 22:08

Mr. Chen,

The page you now claim that sent the traffic, http://chinesenet.net/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi

is a web forum with exactly 13 posts. How you're managing to get thousands of popbehinds form it is obviously something that a person as stupid as I cannot comprehend.

And the referring url showing in your stats was http://www.ChineseNet.com, not http://chinesenet.net/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi

I'm also curious as to why none of your pages have any advertising whatsoever. With all of your traffic you are certainly forgoing some great opportunities for earning income.

Also, The SSN you provided was issued to a woman, born in 1965, in Pennsyvania (that is all the info given to us by the Social Security Administration when we do a query). As there is certainly some mixup we will contact the Social Security Administration and document the obvious error on their part. We have been spot checking SSN's since 1999 and have probably ran 20,000 SSN's through their system and we have yet to find an instance where the Social Security Administration had an incorrect number in their database, but there is always a first time and we'll assist in any way we can to get this error corrected.

I've spent all the time I can spend on your situation. I highly recommend that you complete the requirements for a full, honest, and impartial investigation at Matt's fine website, adsense.org. You and he have lots in common. You should arrange a traffic trade. :)

ebird

January 15th, 2002, 22:23

Robert,

First of all, you didn't answer my questions. I have a list of questions for you. Please answer my questions.

Now, let me answer yours first.
I don't know what's wrong about the SSN, but I think I provided the real one. I couldn't think of any reasons why I didn't provide my real SSN.

Even if you find there's someting wrong about the SSN, why you didn't contact me, or why you didn't just delete my account last year?

Regarding the url, that's just the answer to your "blank page" statement. I am trying to re do the site, what's wrong with this? I only put yout code on the page. After I pull off your code, why you are surprised to see the clean pages?

Now, please answer my questions in my previous post!!! It seems you are trying to stay away from answering them. Are you afraid of answering them?

Archbob

January 15th, 2002, 22:29

Si has strict policies, which are needed to prevent cheaters. I've been with them for quite a while and have always gotten paid. There was some trouble with my first check however, since I was a minor, I faxed them a copy of the Green card and SSN forms and got my check within 5 days.

Actually its hard not to have some traffic come from asia, although roughly 90% of mine comes from North America but the other 10% is scattered from all over including my 2-3% coming from China.

Epgs

January 15th, 2002, 22:30

I don't want to get in the middle of things, but Robert I would reccomend making sure on the SSN again, because if he isn't lying that is not good to accuse your suctomers of that. Also how can you prove he was cheating the system. All you have is his forum on ly has 13 posts. Well who gives a ----. Mine has 800 but i get 2 million page views, a month, and this is for 2 months. So i have racked up 4 million page views and only 800 posts. So don't just base it on that. You need evidence. He might have earned this money.

Robert from SI

January 15th, 2002, 22:41

epgs,

Please read my above posts.

Mr. Chen's "traffic" was all from open proxy IPs in China.

50% of Mr. Chen's "traffic" came from the referring URL of a blank page.

Mr. Chen keeps overlooking these facts while calling me stupid. :)

And we do double check SSN's. We are registered with the United States Social Security Administration and we pay a hefty monthly fee, plus a fee for each query, directly to them so that we can run checks thru their proprietary network. And, as I posted above, we've yet to find an error in tens of thousands of querys of the last few years.

In summary, we have an SSN issued to another party, 100% of traffic from open proxys in China, an address in China asked to be changed to a drop box in the USA, and "traffic" coming from blank pages.

wwalsh8

January 15th, 2002, 22:45

<<< mod edit >>> You are already banned and will stay banned. /Peo

ebird

January 15th, 2002, 22:55

Archbob,

I am Chinese, and I live in US. The smilies and avatars are used by many people. According the the tracker, about 60% of the visitors were from US in December 2001. They said all my traffic was from Asia, I just couldn't understand it and I don't believe it.

Anyway, why they didn't tell me or delete my account when they found they wanted to delete my account last year? Even if they think there was something wrong, why not ask me to confirm everything?

epgs,

Thanks for the understanding. I changed the website from Chinese to English long long time ago and I am targeting Chinese in US. The community name was "English Community for Chinese Worldwide". I temporarily pull the site off, bucause I am choosing the forum scripts. You know, it's hard to choose from vB, phpBB and iB. I want to stick with one and avoid the upgrading headache.

Robert from SI

January 15th, 2002, 22:58

It's ironic that a person who makes statements such as "Robert regularly lies about accounts" comments about slander. :rolleyes:

I'm sure the success of SI's programs over the years must be a bitter pill to swallow for some folks.

Luckily we just smile, keep focused on our work, and keep our affilaites and advertisers happy. :)

BTW: CellularPhones.com is now the largest online retailer of cell phones in the USA. We're doing 50% of the volume that BestBuy, CircutCity, and RadioShack do. And we do it out of one 8,000 square foot office with 40 peopleas opposed to hundreds of locations and thousands of employees. How about that! :)

wwalsh9

January 15th, 2002, 23:04

<<< mod edit >>> Message removed due to abuse. /Peo

mewgood

January 15th, 2002, 23:07

This happen to me too
They delete my account and again they said all my hits come from china but my stat show mostly come from North America . They just don't want to pay, so they delete your account:mad: :mad:

ebird

January 15th, 2002, 23:10

Originally posted by Robert from SI
epgs,

Please read my above posts.

Mr. Chen's "traffic" was all from open proxy IPs in China.

50% of Mr. Chen's "traffic" came from the referring URL of a blank page.

Mr. Chen keeps overlooking these facts while calling me stupid. :)

And we do double check SSN's. We are registered with the United States Social Security Administration and we pay a hefty monthly fee, plus a fee for each query, directly to them so that we can run checks thru their proprietary network. And, as I posted above, we've yet to find an error in tens of thousands of querys of the last few years.

In summary, we have an SSN issued to another party, 100% of traffic from open proxys in China, an address in China asked to be changed to a drop box in the USA, and "traffic" coming from blank pages.

Please read my post. I don't know which one is more accurate. I think webtrendslive may be better? It tells the different stats from yours.

I really don't know what's wrong with the SSN. Please tell me what's the SSN that I provided. You just simply told peole I gave a wrong SSN, evidence?

If I am correct, I have already told you that my first address with SI was in California. Why you just did't tell people what was the address. I have already told you that I moved to a new addrss, why you kept lying? Why you kept calling it a drop box? Does drop box mean a two bedroom apartment?

Why not call me to see whether I am in US or not?

Regarding the blank page, I think hiforums.com is much popular and I am waiting for the professional to re-do my site and do the customized avatars for me. I have already told you this. It's not a blank page.

Let's get this straight. The total I have earned should be around $200. I really don't care about the money. If I have earned it, I want to get it. If what I have done was against the rules of SI, then it's not my money and I don't even want to think about it.

The problems are, you deleted my account based on your wrong information.

And you still didn't answer my questions. I know I have asked a lot of questions, but let's start from these ones again:

Why you didn't delete my account when you found there was something wrong last year?

Why you are so sure your information are all right? (the fact is most of them are wrong)?

ebird

January 15th, 2002, 23:16

Originally posted by Robert from SI

BTW: CellularPhones.com is now the ...

I didn't see any values of this post. It's not relavent. Or maybe I should say, the business is growing is simply becuse you delibrately delete others accounts.

Robert from SI

January 15th, 2002, 23:16

Mr. Chen,

I did answer your questions, repeatedly. You keep asking them over. I also have received ALL of your emails. You can stop sending them now please.

It's not surprising to me that persons who don't post here for months suddenly appear to badmouth SI.

Where's Loko-moko? He's part of the gang. :)

PhiliBoy

January 15th, 2002, 23:18

<<< mod edit >>> Message removed due to abuse. /Peo

loko-moko

January 15th, 2002, 23:21

Originally posted by Robert from SI

Where's Loko-moko? He's part of the gang. :)

You are not worth my time Robert, nor the ---- that your company is built off of.

ebird

January 15th, 2002, 23:21

NO, you didn't answer my questions. Let's try the quesitons in font size 3. 2 posts higher.

You capitalize "ALL" doesn't mean I sent a lot to you. Let me see, I sent an reply to Tony, (maybe 2); posted the truth about what had happened in si's forum 3 times, no replies, all posts got deleted, my account there got deleted. Send 2 messages to admin@si, no replies.

I believe if I don't post it here, I will never get a reply.

loko-moko

January 15th, 2002, 23:23

You also never looked into my case like you said you would...

More bull ---- from your company.

And as I saw above with taxes, if my earnings are reported, which should be $0 since I was not paid, I will file suit as well.

loko-moko

January 15th, 2002, 23:26

Peo , are you going to ban everyone that says something bad about you or SI?

If wwalsh gets banned, Robert deserves it as well.

You can NEVER stop them by banning single names, try all you want, its a joke and fun to them to drive you crazy.

With open proxies all over the world, free email, etc, nothign will stop them.

Grow up and if you ignore them, they will see you don't care and will stop.

Robert from SI

January 15th, 2002, 23:30

loko-moko,

I'm sorry you're so bitter.

I did respond to your question long ago. We don't pay referral commissions on fraudulent traffic. The individual that you referred did not send legitmate traffic and his account was terminated.

I'm sorry if you disagree with this but otherwise persons could referr their brother, run a hitbot overnight, and then demand they be paid 5% of the illegitimate "earnings."

loko-moko

January 15th, 2002, 23:33

It has nothing to do with my referal, we have gone thru this a hundred times now and took it to email.

You said you would look into my account "next week" since you had to go out of town back in Sept.

Remember the "Go Lions"

You never replied after that.

Robert from SI

January 15th, 2002, 23:35

I wasn't aware there was another issue beside the referral $$$.

Please resend. I do remember the "Go Lions" email. You're welcome to call to discuss as well.

Believe it or not I do a lot of things besides discuss disputes on chat boards. I can't remember the particulars of every issue or every email.

Peo

January 15th, 2002, 23:36

Originally posted by loko-moko
Peo , are you going to ban everyone that says something bad about you or SI?

That's funny... He's the only one being banned. If you don't count wwalsh, wwalsh2, wwalsh3, wwalsh4, wwalsh5, wwalsh6, wwalsh7, wwalsh8 and wwalsh9 as different persons? :rolleyes:

Originally posted by loko-moko
Grow up and if you ignore them, they will see you don't care and will stop.

Eh? How would ignoring abusers make this forum better?

loko-moko

January 15th, 2002, 23:39

I do call... Your receptionist tells me to email, and I do not get a reply.

I ask to talk to people and I am denied.

loko-moko

January 15th, 2002, 23:48

Many others abuse it just as well.

Was PhiliBoy banned or was his post just removed, you did not make that clear when you edited his comment.

I am sure there are others, I haven't looked thru the first page on this thread to see who was banned tehre

Robert from SI

January 15th, 2002, 23:52

loko-moko,

The admins do not take phone calls, nor have they since 1999.

We had too many instances of affilaites claiming that they called up and an admin told them it was acceptable to put our ads on sites written in Portugese or that the admin said it was okay to auto-refresh clicks to us. :rolleyes:

All of their correspndence is done thru email so that there is a paper trail. They save everything.

Call the office tomorrow and ask for my secretary Michele. Tell her who you are and she'll put you thru. Keep in mind I do have meetings and go to lunch and such.

ebird

January 15th, 2002, 23:54

I am stilling waiting for the answers.

Robert from SI

January 15th, 2002, 23:58

ebird,

Your answers have been given.

You are choosing to ignore them.

No matter how many time I state the facts of the matter you continue saying the same things and imploring me to call you because now you are in the USA.

lib

January 16th, 2002, 00:04

Robert,

Since your thread seemed to have been deleted regarding your question about logic, I will reply here.

The past 18 months have been very very hectic financially for most companies. Companies are not machines, they are run by people. People are not logical.

If you look at the past hundreds of years, you will find many companies that do many things that are quite illogical.

I have often read both posts from you and the complaints by Mr Walsh on ----------------------.. its actually quite entertaining, but it is also very depressing.

You could have considered me a potential affiliate, but I would never be comfortable not really knowing if I am overpaying for the traffic. Illigitimate traffic is worthless, and no affiliate should have to pay for it, but what is illigitimate traffic? I can't see where this is defined on any of your sites, and it seems to be completely arbitrary. The terms are not very specific.

I think it is probably far more beneficial for my company (and other companies in a similar situation) to simply start their own advertising program and buy ad space directly with affiliate sites.

Robert from SI

January 16th, 2002, 00:11

lib,

We're a net buyer of traffic, not a seller.

We generally define "illegitimate" traffic as traffic which is not the natural occurance of a surfer clicking on a link my thier own interest or free will.

Most bad traffic nowadays is sent from one of two "clicking agent" type hitbots. It very easy to spot it as the traffic all comes from open proxy IPs.

lib

January 16th, 2002, 00:16

Originally posted by Robert from SI
lib,

We're a net buyer of traffic, not a seller.

We generally define "illegitimate" traffic as traffic which is not the natural occurance of a surfer clicking on a link my thier own interest or free will.

Most bad traffic nowadays is sent from one of two "clicking agent" type hitbots. It very easy to spot it as the traffic all comes from open proxy IPs.

How are webmasters expected to control this type of activity? All ads/popups are hosted on your end. I can't believe that many webmasters are running the bots themselves.

I would expect that after a relatively short amount of time, you could build an open proxy list and start ignoring traffic from those proxies. How can you simply not pay the webmaster for any of the traffic?

Matt

January 16th, 2002, 00:17

Greetings,

Continuing on lib's theme, I wrote this and apparently had it posted, but when I went to view the thread, it had been deleted.

Peo: Any reason why? It seemed like a perfectly rational, peaceful post?

Here's my response to your post, Robert:

Greetings,

Robert: I don't know how similar the demand for your services is to Free Web Hosting, but, as far as RedRival goes, demand is insatiable. I now, personally, hand confirm each account and that's growing from around 50 per day to around 70-80 per day. I do not expect it to stop. In RedRival's "glory days", when we were still ad free, we were pulling in 1000 new accounts every week. That's insane demand.

To get to the point, with such demand, deleting a few accounts here and there, some worth thousands, is a no-brainer(if you're the type of person that likes to hurt others). As it stands, delete the top ten sites on RedRival would dent only a slight fraction of the entire "inventory", meaning that getting rid of one account for immediate gain(if there was any to deleting free accounts) would be to my advantage.

Now, apply this to your case, where there's actual monies earned in these accounts. That's some severe temptation to delete the accounts, confiscate the earnings and claim breach of terms, knowing full well that it's a small dent in your network earnings, in the long run, but a significant gain for your personal pocket.

This is all theoretical, of course. But, I'm sure you can see how this concept might entrench itself in the minds of those who were cancelled.

To be frank, Robert: Your conduct abroad doesn't seem to bring honour or dignity to your company. A search for "Robert of SI" or "standard internet corp" or similar terms on Google brings up some very interesting results, and caches.

At the risk of sounding offensive, which I don't intend on being(it's just a matter of fact, as I see it), I wonder sometimes, reading though various forums on the internet, why your superiors or colleagues don't try to restrain you and restrict your forum posting online, as it seems to hurt your company's reputation more than it helps.

Farewell,

Farewell,

Peo

January 16th, 2002, 00:33

lib deleted it himself or I did it by error... I got the same error message as you Matt when I tried to reply to it. I'm sorry if I deleted it, but I think he did himself. He was asking about what rules people break to get banned. On this the Ad Revenue forum only two persons have been banned ever. Both very abusive and banned for repeated abuse, ignoring warnings from moderators, spamming etc.

ebird

January 16th, 2002, 00:33

Originally posted by Robert from SI
ebird,

Your answers have been given.

You are choosing to ignore them.

No matter how many time I state the facts of the matter you continue saying the same things and imploring me to call you because now you are in the USA.

Please tell me how have you answered the questions:
1. You should have known you wanted to delete my account last December. Why you didn't tell me at that time and why you just simply deleted my account at that time?

I am waiting for the answers. Please tell me why!

2. You told the visitors of this forum that I gave false informaiton. You told them I gave your an SSN which points to a lady. You told them I am in China. You told them I changed my address in China to an drop box in US.

I asked you to give evidence. What was the SSN that I gave you? What was the address I gave you before I changed it? Why you called my current address a drop box? You have a poor knowledge of your own country!!! You have never seen an apartment no. with letter in it, have you?!

I looked through this thread and I didn' find the answers. Please give me straight answers here. I am so eager to know why you did those strange and unprofessional things.

You can just say "I want to use your account to generate more money for me as long as you don't ask for the check." "I don't want to give the evidence simple because I don't have it." "I deleted your account so you have nothing to approve how much you have eanred."

Don't beat arond the bush, alright?

Robert from SI

January 16th, 2002, 00:48

lib,

>>>>>>>>
How are webmasters expected to control this type of activity? All ads/popups are hosted on your end. I can't believe that many webmasters are running the bots themselves.
>>>>>>>>

I'm not sure you understood my statement. The persons who are doing this are con-artists, not legitimate webmasters.

Very few people (anymore) are participating in this type of activity. It's fairly easy to detect.

>>>>>>>>
I would expect that after a relatively short amount of time, you could build an open proxy list and start ignoring traffic from those proxies. How can you simply not pay the webmaster for any of the traffic?
>>>>>>>>>
We do exactly that. But the list changes daily, and it's huge. It's like holding back the tide with a broom.

And weather you can delete the traffic or not you still need to terminate the fraudulent affilaite. If a kid is coming to your candy store every day and he trys to shoplift his pockets full of candy you don't allow him to keep trying every day. You kick his butt out.

Robert from SI

January 16th, 2002, 01:02

>>>>>>
At the risk of sounding offensive, which I don't intend on being(it's just a matter of fact, as I see it), I wonder sometimes, reading though various forums on the internet, why your superiors or colleagues don't try to restrain you and restrict your forum posting online, as it seems to hurt your company's reputation more than it helps.
>>>>>>

As I'm the CEO I don't have superiors, but I do have partners. And to them, as to myself, the "proof is in the pudding". And the "pudding" suggests that we are doing something right since 1996.

The only difference between me and most other program operators is that I participate in forums and I occasionally respond to the folks that badmouth us. And nothing infuriates a cheater like being called on it. Most times they just slink away after calling me a few names. Sometimes they are more persistant.

The threads and forums you mention are really just a core of a dozen or so "conspiracy theorists", many of them anonymous, most of who have already slinked away. Meanwhile we just work hard, treat our affilaites and advertisers as best we can, and reap the benefits of our labor. :)

lib

January 16th, 2002, 02:44

Originally posted by Peo
lib deleted it himself or I did it by error... I got the same error message as you Matt when I tried to reply to it. I'm sorry if I deleted it, but I think he did himself. He was asking about what rules people break to get banned. On this the Ad Revenue forum only two persons have been banned ever. Both very abusive and banned for repeated abuse, ignoring warnings from moderators, spamming etc.

Ya, I deleted my post asking what the terms were.. I saw them.. not as clearly listed as I'd like, but I have no idea how it could be clearer really.

lib

January 16th, 2002, 03:02

Originally posted by Robert from SI
lib,

>>>>>>>>
How are webmasters expected to control this type of activity? All ads/popups are hosted on your end. I can't believe that many webmasters are running the bots themselves.
>>>>>>>>

I'm not sure you understood my statement. The persons who are doing this are con-artists, not legitimate webmasters.

Very few people (anymore) are participating in this type of activity. It's fairly easy to detect.

>>>>>>>>
I would expect that after a relatively short amount of time, you could build an open proxy list and start ignoring traffic from those proxies. How can you simply not pay the webmaster for any of the traffic?
>>>>>>>>>
We do exactly that. But the list changes daily, and it's huge. It's like holding back the tide with a broom.

And weather you can delete the traffic or not you still need to terminate the fraudulent affilaite. If a kid is coming to your candy store every day and he trys to shoplift his pockets full of candy you don't allow him to keep trying every day. You kick his butt out.

But you aren't selling candy. I disagree that it can be seen as a similar thing.

Many webmasters complain about SI simply not paying out due to their account being terminated.. I can't believe that there are that many con artists out there. I am sure there are some, but I don't see any process for investigating what you believe to be fraud.

Wouldn't it clear a lot of the mess if SI at least made some sort of attempt at investigating the fraudulent traffic? Especially when you have webmasters that are otherwise well respected complaining for months on end.

"It is doubtful that either of these pages (particularly the 2nd page, since it's blank) get the quantity of unique visitors daily to accumulate the earnings shown on the account."

Regarding that quote, I do feel it quite unwise to decide a referral is fraudulent simply based on your opinion that no one is going to that site.

Anyway, I have another question if you're still reading. A free web provider has to deal with a great deal of abuse. This abuse is dealt with in various ways by that provider, but when that provider is sending popups to visitors to a porn/warez site that is illegally on that server.. what happens? This type of situation is common and completely out of the control of the server administrator (who would probably remove the account and throw some sort of banner page in its place).

I really think that SI and the other companies that run ad programs should be a little more civil. It is wonderful that a niche forum such as this has its own representitive to answer questions and such.. but still, more could be done, especially to help save the reputation of the ad programs which have become notoriously unreliable due to the economy over the last 18 months.

PS - What services out there allow you to reverse-lookup social security numbers? Are you aware of anything out there for VAT lookups?

ebird

January 16th, 2002, 20:54

Robert,

I thought you were kidding, but now I know you were telling the truth, the only truth you have told here: you ARE stupid.

I asked you many times why you didn't delete my account when you knew you wanted to do that last year, you kept avoiding it.

You kept saying I gave the wrong information and the truth is most of my information you gave out here was wrong. And you deleted my account based on the wrong information. You are not profesional at all and you don't even have the guts to admit your mistakes.

I really don't have time to discuss this with you again. You don't worth my time. But I will try my best to spread the word out.

Nowadays, even one person company can have a CEO. so keep the CEO ---- to yourself.

You use others to generate the money for you, and then deleted the account when people ask for the check. You know others don't have time to deal with you for several hundred dollars, and that's the way you keep the money to yourself.

Now, maybe you are happy again, since I hate talking with you and you can keep the money. But, I keep my right to ask the lawyer to audit your logs at anytime. I have saved every information on this thread, you better have whatever you say you have.

This is my last time to read this thread, so save your time to cheat others. The more you cheat, the worse punishment you will have in the future.

You are really disgusting!!! May God punish you!!!

Dodzzz

January 16th, 2002, 22:29

Robert, I think you should've disscussed it first with Mr.Chen before terminating his account.
Because it's not about being an admin in a message board or other free services that you can ban or delete member without warning/investigating it first (although it still is an unethical way).
You're dealing with a business client, despite what the truth is in this Mr.Chen's case, but it's still necessary to discuss and investigate first before doing an arrogant movement such as deleting member and cancelling to pay the money. it's just unethical.
You don't want everybody thinks your company is a group of unprofessional teenagers do you? (no offence, but even a 14 years old girl can build better webpage layout than your company do)

now back onto the topic,
why don't you answer Mr.Chen's questions here?

he said he lives and is living in California, but you said he lives in China. can you give us a prove or evidence that what you said is true?

also, you said that his SSN is fake, can you also prove this?

and regarding the traffic from proxy in China, can't you discuss this matter with Mr.Chen first? because as a webmaster, how can he controls his traffic? should he put something like this on his main site: Hey you Chinese don't go to my website anymore, 'cos I won't get paid by my sponsor! now get out! (this? sorry I'm no expert at this traffic control, but obviously it's not Mr.Chen's fault if it's true that most of the traffic is coming from China)

regarding the blank page, well I don't know much about this since it's Mr.Chen's property.

Archbob

January 16th, 2002, 22:56

I don't see how the SSN could have possibly messed up. They found mine instantly when I faxed them my legal documents, you should consider doing the same to prove yourself, that only takes 5 seconds.

By the way, I am also Chinese and my last name is also Chen. But my first name is Yinan.

xGn

January 17th, 2002, 23:00

Hey Robert..Pay me 1000.00 USD an I'll promote your site! lol..
=) Heh..I wish I got paid to promote sites! Not per every 1000 person I send.heh

NC_TOM

January 17th, 2002, 23:41

What does that post have to do with anything?

Sure, send him 333,334 fully-loaded popups and he'll probably give you that $1000 as long as you follow the rules perfectly..

Kabir

January 18th, 2002, 17:20

I think that Robert is very hypricritcal. I think this way because he says inligitamte traffic is wrong and is grounds for termination yet he keeps the inligitamte traffic going so he can keep getting paid from the affiliates that HE is cheating by continuing to let inligitamte traffic flow thereby cheating the affiliates the traffic is going to.

On another note, I think that Robert looks at every account for even ONE error, whether a digit typo for an SSN number or anything else and when he finds this error he deletes the account for his own lucrative gain.

I also think his bragging about how is cellphone selling company is doing better than major marketing stores around the world is not neccessary and shows a lot of unprofessionalness.

Archbob

January 18th, 2002, 17:40

Originally posted by Kabir

On another note, I think that Robert looks at every account for even ONE error, whether a digit typo for an SSN number or anything else and when he finds this error he deletes the account for his own lucrative gain.

You know that one digit can make the difference between a 50 year old CEO and a 16 year old hacker?

Kaliber

January 18th, 2002, 21:37

Stop avoiding the questions eBird is asking - I have been with your company in the past and have not gotten paid aswell!

Think about it: Perhaps it would be better to just admit your wrong, pay him his money and the whole thing is over and done with. Im sure a measly $200 is worth your reputation around here. I am never going to go with one of your companys again.

-Chris

Peo: Don't delete this, there is freedom of speech.

<<< mod edit >>> Edited because of personal attack, abusive language and here say. You may report your own experiences if you follow the rules posted at the top of this forum. /Peo

Mika

January 18th, 2002, 21:53

I wonder how a company as Robert described it, can use such methods to reply to their ex or present customers!! It doesn't look professional to me, it doesn't look good. Sorry Robert, but with this you'll lose many people (future customers).

Archbob

January 18th, 2002, 22:35

Well, go to SI forums, seems the greater majority of people there are perfectly happy(and being paid) by SI.

Peo

January 18th, 2002, 23:37

I know there's tons of personal attacks and abuse in this thread, but it's not possible to edit all of that. No more abuse will be tolerated. Persons responsible for abuse in this thread consider yourself warned. One have already been banned, might be more to come. Contact me via email if you have any questions about this, but don't post about it here.

Now please let's get back to the topic of this thread without any personal attacks etc. /Peo

Jeff Booth

January 26th, 2002, 00:28

Originally posted by Kabir
I think that Robert is very hypricritcal. I think this way because he says inligitamte traffic is wrong and is grounds for termination yet he keeps the inligitamte traffic going so he can keep getting paid from the affiliates that HE is cheating by continuing to let inligitamte traffic flow thereby cheating the affiliates the traffic is going to.

On another note, I think that Robert looks at every account for even ONE error, whether a digit typo for an SSN number or anything else and when he finds this error he deletes the account for his own lucrative gain.

I also think his bragging about how is cellphone selling company is doing better than major marketing stores around the world is not neccessary and shows a lot of unprofessionalness. Ok, you're obviously missing the point that Robert didn't go 'looking for one error' so he could randomly ban people, he found an account that was not only delivering enormous amounts of traffic from proxy's, but also had anomolies on both the address AND the social security number.

Now look at the facts here, when you have an account with one error, it could be that - just an error. However when you have one person's account who has ALL these problems, don't you think there is a VERY GOOD CHANCE that something 'fishy' is going on? I sure as hell would, and I cannot blame SI for doing it too. They run a business, not a charity.

Jeff Booth

January 26th, 2002, 00:33

Originally posted by Mika
I wonder how a company as Robert described it, can use such methods to reply to their ex or present customers!! It doesn't look professional to me, it doesn't look good. Sorry Robert, but with this you'll lose many people (future customers). Can you blame him? He has to deal with people attempting to cheat his company on a daily basis, then when they get busted they resort to 'calling him out' and in some cases 'slandering' him on a public forum, most likely as a petty form of revenge.

If I were in his position, I wouldn't think twice about talking the way he does to someone who slandered me and attempted to cheat my company.

I just don't get how people can break the rules, then claim innocense. Everything is *RIGHT THERE* in the terms, if you violate 1 term, you are history! And I can say without a doubt that SI is not some 'cheat company' that randomly terminates affiliates to save money, because frankly they have been paying me on time for over 1.5 years.. (popuptraffic, searchtraffic, allclicks, chfcp)..

My checks from them usually range from $50-$600 a month, and unless they only 'randomly ban people' who make over $2 grand a month, I can't see where you are coming from.

You broke the rules, you got caught, DEAL with it.

Archbob

January 26th, 2002, 00:38

I make only about $25 per month from them, but they have paid me without question. Funny they "randomly"
kicked you out but "randomly" decided to pay me.

Jeff Booth

January 26th, 2002, 00:43

Originally posted by Archbob
I make only about $25 per month from them, but they have paid me without question. Funny they "randomly"
kicked you out but "randomly" decided to pay me. I think you misread me? I'm assuming that was a reply to me because randomly was in quotes, however they have paid me on-time everytime..

Archbob

January 26th, 2002, 00:59

Sorry, it wasn't directed at you.

It was directed at the people who are accusing SI.

Jan

January 26th, 2002, 01:26

<off topic>Welcome Jeff! Nice to see another friendly face here :) Your knowledge and experience will be well regarded </off topic>

Whilst I am not an affiliate of SI, I do know from observation (and word of mouth) that there are MANY happy campers at the SI campsite :classic2:

Jeff Booth

January 26th, 2002, 02:33

Thanks Jan :) It's good to find another resource for advertising and affiliate programs, some of the others have been having a real lack of posts lately. Just discovered this site today, and just HAD to chime in about this one!

My partner and I actually have a saying, I would rather have $300 dollars from SI then $600 from another company, because frankly SI has been one of the ONLY companies we can rely on as steady income! Just shames me to see people try to bring things like this into public with the sole intent of damaging a companies reputation. I for one know if I was having an issue with a company, the best way to get things corrected isn't to go into a public tirade :) People need to remember SI is run by humans too, and the best way to get what you want from a human isn't to crap on their business verbally, call them liars, morons and other such insults :)

Archbob - That's ok, I probably was just mistreading :)

shunt

January 26th, 2002, 11:46

<<< mod edit >>> Banned abuser. Won't ever be allowed back. /Peo

Robert from SI

January 26th, 2002, 14:59

Surprise! A first time anonymous poster bashing SI. :rolleyes:

"Steve Hunt,"

Adbility.com is not a "respected industry professional." The site is run by Lee Bottemiller, a gentleman who purchased the site for a few thousand dollares from it's previous owner.

I can buy a website about Mars and it does not make me an expert on all things martian. It means I own a website. :)

Just because someone puts up a website (http://www.flat-earth.org/), and other websites (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flatearth.html) are about providing "independant verification" (http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/FlatHome.htm) , doesn't mean that there is any validity to their nonsence.

I contacted Mr. Bottemiller about his accusations. His responce was not what I would expect from a "respected industry professional."

1) Mr. Bottemiller does not even know if the persons supposedly complaining about SI are even our affilaites. I asked who specifically was accusing us of not paying them. He refused to answer. I informed him that SI recieves many emails every day from people asking for address changes or asking questions and they do not even belong to SI's programs. We get mail daily from affilaites of PopUpSponsor, SearchReferral, SearchBucks, etc.

2) Mr. Bottemiller does not know if the same person hasn't sent him multiple complaints. Nor has he bothered to check.

3) I offered to allow Mr Bottemiller (or his proxy) to visit our offices, completely unnannounced, and inspect documents, cancelled checks, or whatever else they like. He refused saying "send me whatever you want."

4) Mr. Bottemiller has no qualms at all about opening affilaite accounts with SI and profiting off of the signups he refers to us. He has open and active accounts in most of our programs earning referral income. He hides this by using javascript rollovers to hide the affilite ID's.

It seems illogical to me (and to most honest webmasters I suppose) that any affilaite program would find it in their best financial interest to rip-off their super-affilaites. Wouldn't logic dictate that affilaites earning over $1000.00/month would be the ones in the best position to persue legal action? Why $1000.00/month? Yahoo!, ESPN.com, Hotmail, MSNBC.com and other companies currently advertise for SI. I assure you that they make well, well, in excess of Mr. Bottemiller's threshold.

Unfortunately the larger a firm gets, the more persons there are with their own private agendas for wishing that company ill will. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that someday SI will be able to have 10,000 sites devoted to how terrible we are just like
Wal-Mart (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=wal+mart+sucks). :o

Archbob

January 26th, 2002, 15:03

Hey! I like wal-mart!

Jeff Booth

January 26th, 2002, 15:19

Originally posted by shunt

As a small webmaster, income wise, it is understandable you would think this. But, I've seen way too many highly respected professionals report that SI does in fact treat their larger webmasters in a very unprofessional way.

If you want to email me off the board I'll give you some links to look at that would probably be inappropriate to post here, as they are on other discussion sites and other ad review forums. But when industry experts like the people at adbility.com back up the accusations being made by some of the disgruntled webmasters here, I have to give it a lot of credibility. And the way their reps respond here only make me more convinced that the critics were probably right.

Feel free to send me a private email, I'll give you some reading material. Not that it matters really, as a small webmaster, it is unlikely to effect you ever. They seem to only do this to accounts that have been owed more than $1000 a month, and the more over you are the more likely it seems you are to be targetted. So you and the others who have praised SI in this thread really are not the sorts who would be able to refute the allegations in any way that is relevant.

I better not say more, it seems like the webmasters here are quick to edit or remove posts and ban people. I've tried to stay within the rules here, but who knows when the rules seem to be so discretionary.

Steve Hunt
Stockton, California I really do have a hard time believe this, and frankly (at no offense to you) I wouldn't believe most of your reading material, as people who got thrown out for whatever reason are obviously going to be extremely bias.

While I may not make that much with SI, I don't consider myself a small webmaster, nor does my partner who makes triple my ammount with SI (He uses their programs exclusively, while I do not). Strangely enough he hasn't had any problems either =)

You know, come to think of it a while back I had a small problem with SI. Back when they were changing the terms for Searchtraffic to allow only 1 searchbox per page. Well apparently I didn't see that term, and had 2 searchboxes on 1 page for the longest time. They didn't 'flat out' ban me like they could have, instead a few e-mails were thrown back and forth, problem solved, and everything went back to normal. That's proof enough for me they aren't just 'looking for reasons' to kick people, because technically I had violated one of their terms, however they easily understood that term wasn't a big deal (especially since it doesn't exist anymore ;). If they wanted to 'money grub' my account would be gone, i'm sure.

Anyhow, it's all just speculation, because I doubt I will be able to convince you SI is good if you have had a bad experience, and you won't be able to convince me they are bad until I have a bad experience :)

Toodles!

Robert from SI

January 26th, 2002, 15:28

I love Wal-Mart. :) I was just using it to illustrate a point....

I've said before on other forums that SI has had in excess of 100,000 affiliates come and go over the last 3 years. If 1/2 of 1% of those people were somehow displeased it means that there are 500 folks walking around out there with an axe to grind.

We do our best to treat our affilaites (and our advertisers) as best we can. Our admins occassionally make mistakes (just like affilaites do). Thats why we check, double check, and then save and document everything. If there is ever an issue a supervisor can review emails, HTML, IP's or pretty much all we have pertaining to a particular issue.

We've had instances where people have complained on a webforum and I personally reviewed their issue and overruled the admin. But 99.9% of the time the admin is correct.

There are hundreds of thousands of people in prison in the USA as we speak. I'm confident that somewhere, someone has been imprisoned who was innocent. Despite all the safe guards, despite all the appeals processes, it's bound to happen when you're dealing with that many people. Does this mean that the doors of all prisons whould be swung open? Or that the USA legal system should be disbanded? Hardly....

We use every reasonable and prudent method to document to document and combat fraud (It's one of the reasons SI is still around while most other programs foded years ago). When we see a person sending thousands of clicks from blank pages, sending those thousands of clicks from open proxy IP addresses, and providing us with SSN's that are not thiers we pretty much have it wrapped up that this person is attempting to defraud us.

But other folks with their own agendas will still come along and badmouth us. :confused:

shunt

January 26th, 2002, 23:18

<<< mod edit >>> Banned abuser. Won't ever be allowed back. /Peo

Cyberspace

January 27th, 2002, 17:20

Originally posted by Robert from SI
It's ironic that a person who makes statements such as "Robert regularly lies about accounts" comments about slander. :rolleyes:

I'm sure the success of SI's programs over the years must be a bitter pill to swallow for some folks.

Luckily we just smile, keep focused on our work, and keep our affilaites and advertisers happy. :)

BTW: CellularPhones.com is now the largest online retailer of cell phones in the USA. We're doing 50% of the volume that BestBuy, CircutCity, and RadioShack do. And we do it out of one 8,000 square foot office with 40 peopleas opposed to hundreds of locations and thousands of employees. How about that! :)

Oh shut up. Nobody cares. :rolleyes:

venomx

January 27th, 2002, 18:16

I think everyone remembers my problem with SI. Robert insisted I was cheating them and so on. Well I got my money finally a month or so ago. Just arrived out of the blue. Iemailed Robert and he has no idea why I got the check after all this time.

If I cheated SI why was I paid?

Cyberspace

January 27th, 2002, 18:46

:D Good for you venomx.

I hope it has cleared your bank. He probably frantically called the bank to put a stop payment to it.

venomx

January 28th, 2002, 02:41

It was cleared before I asked him about it. LOL

kryton

February 6th, 2002, 01:45

Originally posted by Robert from SI
Adbility.com is not a "respected industry professional." The site is run by Lee Bottemiller, a gentleman who purchased the site for a few thousand dollares from it's previous owner.

I contacted Mr. Bottemiller about his accusations. His responce was not what I would expect from a "respected industry professional."

1) Mr. Bottemiller does not even know if the persons supposedly complaining about SI are even our affilaites. I asked who specifically was accusing us of not paying them. He refused to answer. I informed him that SI recieves many emails every day from people asking for address changes or asking questions and they do not even belong to SI's programs. We get mail daily from affilaites of PopUpSponsor, SearchReferral, SearchBucks, etc.

2) Mr. Bottemiller does not know if the same person hasn't sent him multiple complaints. Nor has he bothered to check.

3) I offered to allow Mr Bottemiller (or his proxy) to visit our offices, completely unnannounced, and inspect documents, cancelled checks, or whatever else they like. He refused saying "send me whatever you want."

4) Mr. Bottemiller has no qualms at all about opening affilaite accounts with SI and profiting off of the signups he refers to us. He has open and active accounts in most of our programs earning referral income. He hides this by using javascript rollovers to hide the affilite ID's.

I never knew any of that. I have been with SI for a while now and always paid on time.

I must admit the review from Mr. Bottemiller site, did make me a little worried. I think mainly because of the way I found his site. If you apply to Burstmedia and get rejected they send you an email advertising his site telling you to look there for alternative ways to make money from your site.

The funny thing is, his review of burstmedia is not favourable! lol

lfc7607

February 13th, 2002, 15:21

Been reading this interesting thread and have some cuestions I think should be answerd:

1) How do you know that (25XXX Industrial Blvd. APT. Z 2309) is a drop box ??

2) As I'm not an American, and therefore do not know much about your SSN number, I just wonder, how do you check it. And more important, how do you make sure that it is the right one that is being checked. I mean the publisher could have mistyped, you could have misread, and mistyped the number you send to the Social Security Administration, they can misread your typing and so on..... (where I'm from, the system is easy, the date of birth then 4 digits, where the last digit if it's even that you are a woman and not even, then you are a man).

3) If you suspect some publishers of cheating, why don't you suspend, that account, send the publisher a mail and take the dialog there. Insted I understand that you close the account (whithout notifying the publisher), stop sending the checks, BUT keep sending the ads. When the publisher then reacts to the missing checks, then he is notifyed, that his account have been deactivated.

4) Do you charge the advertisers for the ads that has been runing in the period, on such a deactivated account ??? Well if you do, are you not then cheating the advertisers ????

5) As I understand, it is your sole opiniun whether a publisher is cheating or not, and whether the account should be closed or not. Or do you have some outside where a publisher could "try" his/her case. You must remember, when You have the power to decide wheter to pay or not, and there is no outside appeal posibility, then the publisher have only one thing to do, if he/she feels mistreated, and that is to scream WOLF as high as posible, to warn other publishers.

Martin
Martins Demi Moore Site
http://users.cybercity.dk

Sydney251

February 16th, 2002, 03:35

Hello,

What I dont understand is the fact that Robert is the CEO of SI, therefore why doesnt he use his time more effectively rather than responding to the hundreds of compliants he gets from forums. I see he answers all compliants across all forums, why doesnt he just hire someone. Probably would be time better spent.

grand

February 16th, 2002, 04:03

Robert, since you work for SI, i need to ask a Question..
I'm a member of Popuptraffic.com...
Look im young and barely getting all this business crap in to my system..
Anyways, do checks below 100 bucks a month get reported to the IRS? and does that take a bite out of my check? I been using popupsponsor.com and they paid me so far 100% of what my account statements...
But all checks have been very low below 80 bucks a month. Also if i make lets say 55.25 a month using popuptraffic.com i will get paid that full? Or less because of the tax or whatever irs does...
LOL yeah ignore my ignorance in irs and check payment stuff, just want to finnaly understand how it works... really
All i been doing so far is getting checks and changing them with my ID at local Check and Cash Stores...

firstmark

February 16th, 2002, 22:04

Forever Jason you said

"What I dont understand is the fact that Robert is the CEO of SI, therefore why doesnt he use his time more effectively rather than responding to the hundreds of compliants he gets from forums"

I guess Robert sees the view of SI as important in such forums where small webmasters hang out. We are his future.

Archbob

February 17th, 2002, 01:08

SI does not report earnings unless they totall more than $400 a year. Thats the standard right now.

firstmark

February 17th, 2002, 01:37

I think its $600 as that is the law I think.

grand

February 17th, 2002, 04:32

hmm i thought it was $599 per month....

Archbob

February 17th, 2002, 23:45

I think they changed it last year to $400/year.

Todd

February 18th, 2002, 10:12

Originally posted by firstmark
I think its $600 as that is the law I think.
Correct. They will send one of these to you:
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1099m02.pdf

zqpm

March 3rd, 2002, 10:24

Hmmm i dont see this question by lfc7607 answered

4) Do you charge the advertisers for the ads that has been runing in the period, on such a deactivated account ??? Well if you do, are you not then cheating the advertisers ????

Czar

March 5th, 2002, 21:57

Originally posted by zqpm
Hmmm i dont see this question by lfc7607 answered

4) Do you charge the advertisers for the ads that has been runing in the period, on such a deactivated account ??? Well if you do, are you not then cheating the advertisers ????
That has been answered on several occasions previously, but just to recap, SI is SI's biggest buyer. That is, with a few exceptions, they're generally not brokering direct clicks or pops on behalf of other advertisers, but promoting their own CellularPhones.com, TurboFind and ClickHereToFind properties.

With the exception of PopupTraffic, every one of SI's programs is performance-based, and those that do involve action on third-party advertising links as part of the program (ClickThruTraffic, SearchTraffic, TextLinks), not only pass through SI's own filters and fraud systems, but those as adopted by their search-based link partners. That is, FindWhat and the others with whom SI are allied also block traffic from certain countries and discount multiple clicks or other suspicious activity originating from a single IP or from junk proxies.

So no, SI's not profiting from the exploitation of its advertisers. They may, however, be gaining free promotion for their own sites after terminating a member for cheating, but who could possibly blame them for that? Several other companies not only shut fraudsters down, but send them invoices and/or legal correspondence seeking retribution for said abuse.

I'd say this is a pretty good deal, comparitively speaking.

HTH.

lfc7607

March 6th, 2002, 01:09

So no, SI's not profiting from the exploitation of its advertisers. They may, however, be gaining free promotion for their own sites after terminating a member for cheating

The problem, as I read ebirds post, was amoung other things thatSI did not tell him that they THOUGHT that he was in violation with their terms, but IN BAD FAITH kept sending their pop-up pages.

When they termiate an acount for, what they think is, cheating, at least they could stop sending their ads, and/or send a mail describing WHY your acount has been terminated, and how to contact them (and then respond). Not doing so, I think is much worse than a publisher violating the terms, as they are often vere strict, and can be subjekt for interpretaion. i.e what's erotic material to some, is not to others etc.

And as I stated someone has either goten free ads OR SI has been earning money on ads that according to SI was in violation with their terms, and the adverteiser has therefore not goten what he was paing for.

With regards to blocking for traffic in certain countries, it does not appear to have been happening in this case.

I did not get proof that ebird had been in violation with their terms, and as wrote, it is SI alone that is prosecuter, judge and jury, in cases where they THINK that there has been a violation of their terms.So if they do not want to pay, they can say that you have been in violation with their term, close your account, but of cource keep making money on you until you remove their ads.

As publisher you have no other way to go than these board warning others.

kid kool

March 6th, 2002, 01:28

The problem, as I read ebirds post, was amoung other things thatSI did not tell him that they THOUGHT that he was in violation with their terms, but IN BAD FAITH kept sending their pop-up pages

It says right in the terms that they do not contact affiliates when they are terminated. If a webmaster finds that to be unacceptable, then they can go and join another program. You don't just agree to the terms and then later expect to be bewildered when they enforce them. I agree the terms may be subjective with regard to certain things. In that case it is your job to request clarification prior to sending them any traffic which could conceivably be non-compliant.