Since 2004, I’ve been tracking and reporting all manner of rogue affiliates — using spyware and adware to cover competitors’ sites; using trickier spyware and adware to claim commission on merchants’ organic traffic; typosquatting; stuffing cookies through invisible IFRAME’s and IMG’s, banner ads, and even hacked forum sites; and the list goes on. I now have automation catching these practices in ever-increasing quantities.
While I’ve written up dozens of rogue affiliates on this site and in various presentations, today Wesley Brandi and I are introducing something better: query-based access to our records of affiliate fraud targeting top affiliate merchants. Enter a merchant’s domain name, and we’ll tell you how much affiliate fraud we’ve seen targeting that domain — handy for merchants wanting to check whether their program is clean, and for affiliates wanting to confirm the trustworthiness a program they’re considering promoting. We’re not currently posting details of the specific perpetrators, but we have affiliate ID numbers, domain names, and packet log proof on file for each violator, and we can provide these upon request.
Take a look:
Affiliate Fraud Information Lookup
(2015 update: service no longer operational)