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Comment RSSAre ISPs Stealing Your Affiliate Commissions?
Written by pacelattinAugust 8, 2011 # 1:11 pm # Industry News # 18 Comments
According to lawsuit filed today by law firm Reese Richman LLP, there is evidence that several ISPs have been engaging in questionable and possibly illegal behavior (according to them) by hijacking search queries. Using a technology by Paxfire, supposedly DNS redirects from searches on Bing, Yahoo and Google would lead consumers directly to the page of certain brand and credit the ISP’s affiliate account with any possible commissions.
According to research done by two researchers at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkely, California, all together some 10 (or more) ISPs were involved with using this technology to hijack customer’s searches and mainly send to Commission Junction accounts for Dell, Bloomingdales and Safeway. If these claims are true, this would also have overwritten valid cookies from other affiliates using this method.
The Paxfire technology was originally made to create search pages for ISPs users for DNS and non-domain errors, but nothing on their website talks about using it to hijack commissions. One thing that should be noted is that the researchers claim that the “believe” Paxfire was involved in doing this, but do not as of this moment have specific proof that Paxfire is behind this scheme or that the ISPs actually were benefiting from this. The lawsuit naming them will obviously help find out if they are involved.
UPDATE: According to Commission Junction they have banned PAXFIRE from their system effective IMMEDIATELY
List of ISPs that are reported to be involved:
Cavalier
Cincinnati Bell
Cogent
Frontier
Hughes
IBBS
Insight Broadband
Megapath
Paetec
RCN
Wide Open West
XO Communication
What are your thoughts on this?
Written by pacelattin
Pace Lattin is one of the top experts in interactive advertising, affiliate marketing. Pace Lattin is known for his dedication to ethics in marketing, and focus on compliance and fraud in the industry, and has written numerous articles for publications from MediaPost, ClickZ, ADOTAS and his own blogs.
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Are ISPs Stealing Your Affiliate Commissions? – Performance Marketing Insider http://t.co/nEL2MKL via @pacelattin
@pacelattin According to lawsuit filed today by law firm Reese Richman LLP, there is evidence that several ISPs have bee http://t.co/M9nL8OT
@pacelattin According to lawsuit filed today by law firm Reese Richman LLP, there is evidence that several ISPs have bee http://t.co/y4fIsw4
@pacelattin According to lawsuit filed today by law firm Reese Richman LLP, there is evidence that several ISPs have bee http://t.co/QeaSJT1
Are ISPs Stealing Your Affiliate Commissions?: According to lawsuit filed today by law firm Reese Richman LLP, t… http://bit.ly/ow0trj
PM Insider: Are ISPs Stealing Your Affiliate Commissions? http://t.co/nEL2MKL
Performance Mktg Are ISPs Stealing Your Affiliate Commissions? http://bit.ly/ow0trj via @PaceLattin
Wow! thank for sharing this info. Everyone invovled with affiliate marketing should be aware of this.
urgh… that’s crazy. I googled the lawsuit, but could you throw a link in the post? Think everyone should be eyeballing this closely as it progresses.
matt recently posted..How to Dominate the Results in Google for Your Town
Update: Commission Junction bans Affiliate Hijacker Paxfire after story: http://t.co/nEL2MKL
[...] Using a technology by Paxfire, supposedly DNS redirects from searches on Bing, Yahoo and Google would lead consumers directly to the page of certain brand and credit the ISP’s affiliate account with any possible commissions. [more here] [...]
Are ISPs Stealing Your Affiliate Commissions? - http://t.co/XyK55bu
Are ISPs Stealing Your Affiliate Commissions? http://t.co/8i7Py8E
Update: Commission Junction bans Affiliate Hijacker Paxfire after story: http://t.co/Dj2eSqE @pacelattin @nachase
Are ISPs Stealing Your Affiliate Commissions? - http://t.co/QatJuMn
[...] Using a technology by Paxfire, supposedly DNS redirects from searches on Bing, Yahoo and Google would lead consumers directly to the page of certain brand and credit the ISP’s affiliate account with any possible commissions. [more here] [...]
It’s good CJ banned them without any mucking around. So often the big affiliate networks seem to not care what goes on as long as the network is still raking in money.
Glad to see that this is being reported & addressed. Anyone know how long this has been going on?