[stevenm]

Hello,

What are some ways of detecting/preventing our affiliates from using parasiteware in our program? We are on CJ and reject any "incentive" affiliates who use software, but that tactic relies on an affiliate admitting to using BHOs. Are there other ways to detect and/or prevent?

-Steve

[Adam Ward]

Contact Kellie at
http://www.affiliatefairplay.com

[ecomcity]

Kellie sure can give all your suspect affiliates the B-a-HO smell test.

[Haiko de Poel, Jr.]

Kellie

[Chocolate_Chicken]

Buy software to administer your own program.

With [network name redacted] in particular, there are too many ways for the vermin to slip in sideways without being detected for awhile.

[Kellie aka Ms. B]

Hi Steve,

I'll be more than happy to help you if I can. I don't like to go into too much detail publicly on detection and monitoring options. Feel free to drop me a line if you like. You can email me or pm me through the boards by clicking on my user name from anywhere on the boards.

While running your own software to administer your program may give you a bit more protection in a sense, I'm seeing more and more independent programs show in the parasite programs. They can and will still try to get into your program and you still need to be able to recongnize and detect. There are also more out there who are hiding the fact they have a software application in the scheme of things then many would like to think about.

[bedelman]

Steve,

I've found that the only rigorous technique is hands-on testing. Get a set of test PCs, infect them with the bad guys' software, and watch what they do. Now, this can be quite a pain -- lots of test PCs, some specialized skills. But that's why folks sometimes contract this out -- like to me or Kellie.

You're right to worry of affiliates not telling the truth about what they're up to. That's a big problem. The many independent affiliates who use 180solutions (see my article) generally describe themselves falsely in their affiliate applications.

I share Kellie's sense that independent affiliate programs are being targeted more and more. CJ's network quality team does seem to be slowly moving to stop some of the most flagrant abuses, and it's natural that the bad-actor affiliates then begin to look elsewhere.

If you're not in a position to do hands-on testing yourself or to hire anyone to do such testing, you can always review your logs -- looking for traffic with missing or suspect referers, for example. If you have the ability to compare users' entry times through affiliate links versus not through affiliate links, you should also look for affiliates who invariably send users to you through affliate links mere seconds after users had arrived at your site in some other way. This can be a hard search to run, but it will find most 180 affiliates, many DirectRevenue and IBIS users, etc.


Ben

[PaulS]

Kellie is an excellent source, and a great help when trying to keep your program clean.

If you haven't PM'd her yet... I would recommend doing so.

Paul