Info-Profits Talk - Affiliate Hijacking

allan

Hi everyone,

Has this happened to you?

What I'm about to describe I have been aware of for a long time
but it is the first time I have witnessed it first hand on my own
computer.

What I'm talking about is affiliate hijacking and I was quite
amazed at just how effective this stuff works.

These things (software programs, scripts, etc) embed
themselves onto your computer usually with no easy way
to uninstall them.

They come via downloading some freeware/shareware, from
unethical web masters who automatically install the stuff
on your computer when you surf their site and even in
some paid software that you purchase.

What happens?

After seeing it first hand on my computer it is quite
amazing. EVERY banner on any website I surfed was replaced
with a banner advertising one of their products.

If I didn't know the sites (which were mine) I would never have
known that these weren't the banners of the webmaster. They
replace the original completely with no trace.

Also certain keywords on the websites were highlighted with
links to take people away from your site and to their product
related to that keyword.

Again if you didn't know better you would have thought it
was the way the webmaster designed the site not having
a clue that it was devious software downloaded on your
computer doing this stuff.

This is a dirty low down trick but it will continue to happen
because of the amazing results it can produce. Imagine
a site that gets 100,000 visitors a month sneaking this stuff
onto their visitors computers.

They would continue to make money from banner ads on other
webmasters webpages that they are not paying for.
Illegal but free advertising on every page their visitors
goto for years.

The greed glans prevent most from succeeding at this as they
go overboard leaving too many tell tale signs like changing
your homepage and adding unwanted toolbars.

So they shoot themselves in the foot and give themselves away.

But what about a sneaky one that just drops a program that
changes banner ads to their own?

Most interent surfers would never know and when they
buy something from one of these ads they are creating
commission for these grubs.

Has anyone else seen this first hand?

All the best
Allan

jason_ga

I haven't seen them first hand, although I've heard plenty of people talk about it.

You can give yourself some protection by turning off Active X in your web brower (this assumes you are using Internet Explorer on the PC - the most common combination).

Spyware/Scumware like the ones you ran into get onto your computer because Microsoft left this wide open door in your browser (turned on by default).

True, there are many legitimate things that Active X can be used for. And a while ago thats all it was used for. But with the increase in spy/scumware around, you can't afford to take any chances any more.

(If there are sites that you absolutely need Active X enabled to have them work correctly, you can set it to "prompt" you before any Active X programs are run.)

The other option is to use a web browser other than Internet Explorer. I use FireFox (a version of Mozilla) when I'm using a PC, and I'm fairly happy with it.

Cheers,
Jason

Louis

Hi Allan

I haven't seen it first hand on my PC thank goodness, but I am completely paranoid about PC security. Funnily enough, just the act of NOT surfing in Internet Explorer solves many problems.

Having a popup blocker. Turning off JavaScript when I'm particularly worried (you do lose functionality that way though of course). And making sure you've turned off any scripting in emails.

But as you say, it is a way to make money quickly. I don't know where the law stands on such "PC Hijacking"?

On the other side of things -- from what I hear Norton Firewall I believe actually hides banners and well known affiliate links (Commission Junction for example) to "protect you".

And the danger with Internet Explorer - since it has the widest audience, as soon as an exploit (a way to get around the security measures) becomes known, many people take advantage of it to make a quick buck.

As an example - you can use an IE exploit to install a dialer on someone's machine without them knowing.

Then next time they connect (usually through dial up) they wrack up a huge phone bill, because of premium line charges.

Another recent story I heard about - someone took advantage of an IE exploit to install millions of copies of their toolbar into people's computers without their permission.

This was simply during a matter of days.

It's obviously unethical, but underhand tactics like this make those companies a lot of money quickly.

Sincerely,
Louis

williec

I've seen it on my computer and a variation which is Microsoft Smart Tags. I use a program that scans my computer everyday
looking for know spyware and "hijackers" and then it removes them after identifying them. I use Spybot Search And Destroy,
and sometimes Spyware Nuker.

Microsoft Smarttag allow IE (the browsers) to hilight certain
keywords in a page and turn them into hyperlinks to other pages.
.This allows people to visit your webpages or any webpages and
see certain keywords that have been pre-identified. When
the visitor sees this hyperlink on the visited page and click on
it they are sent to the website that has paid for this service or
traffic. This allows your visitors to be hijacked.

The way to prevent your website visitors from being hijacked
is to put a metatag in the top of the page that prevents
Microsoft Smartpage Parsing. You can look up that one
line of code and how/why it works in the searchengines if you
desire. I have it on some of my pages but not most. Whenever
we update a page we do generally add that metatag.

Willie Crawford