[judith1]

Hello all,

Can anyone suggest a really effective strategy on how to protect my affiliate links from being hijacked?

I appreciate any help on this subject. We really need to protect ourselves as best we can.

Thanks!

Judith

[loxly]

Work with merchants that don't work with those that hijack links.

[rematt]

Originally Posted by judith1

Can anyone suggest a really effective strategy on how to protect my affiliate links from being hijacked?

Judith, about once a month or so we get a new user that comes and asks how to protect their links. A little more information would be beneficial and possibly we could offer a solution. What makes you think that your links are being hijacked and who is hijacking them?

-rematt

[Gary-AvantLink]

What Debbie said.. probably your most effective strategy would be to stay away from merchants who allow rogue Affiliate activity to proliferate in their programs.

[Essociate]

using encrypted links can help a little. another strategy is to setup an old pc and install various scumware onto it and make sure your traffic is not being sponged off.

[loxly]

Encrypted links don't help at all. The popups and overwriting occurs once the visitor lands on the merchant's page. How they get there makes no difference.

[Chuck Hamrick]

judith1 asks a legitimate question, I see many coupon sites that run their links through an internal router i.e. php to keep others from copying their coupon codes. I don't have insight into this exact technology and perhaps someone can define it.

[loxly]

Originally Posted by Chuck Hamrick

judith1 asks a legitimate question, I see many coupon sites that run their links through an internal router i.e. php to keep others from copying their coupon codes. I don't have insight into this exact technology and perhaps someone can define it.

That still doesn't stop a parasite pop. It just keeps a coupon code from being scraped, which wasn't what the original questions was, I don't think? That's a solution to a different problem.

[Chuck Hamrick]

Good point Loxly and I can understand why you answered the way you did. To my understanding javascript links versus HTML text/banners give you some protection. We do need a better technology and I am talking with two companies who are working in that direction but nothing is currently available.

[loxly]

I'd be interesting to hear how a javascript link stops a pop that happens on the landing page that doesn't relate to where the click came from?

[Chuck Hamrick]

It was from a discussion with Haiko years ago and I do not have the technical expertise to verify if it is accurate. I doubt that Haiko will want to discuss now so if anyone has insight into whether or not this will work please speak up.

[MichaelColey]

Masking links, using JavaScript, and things like that would only stop very rudimentary parasites. In practice, I'm not sure there are any parasites left that it would stop. If there are, they're rare enough that you'll never notice a difference.