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Bandwagonhost banned my friend's affiliate account, one word reason: "ABUSE"
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That depends. I used to code very good php while have no knowledge about the linux stuff. I had known the img tab (could work as a way to hide the real url) stuff years before I can understand the difference between apache & nginx.
Anyway, your explanation is good to make a full-side view of this story. And once again "瓜田不纳履，李下不整冠" (Don't tidy up your shoes in a melon patch, neither adjust your hat under a plum tree). I don't see any connection between this and the DDoS thing. So it would be great if you clarify that.
Put it this way, if someone went to Serverbear (replace it with every single legitimate site who have masked affiliated link on this), clicked on their masked link and then decided not to buy it at that point but ultimately decided to buy a VPS from you a month later, Serverbear would be paid on the commission, no?
Majority of the people who are technie enough would ensure the cookies are cleared after each browsing session. To most of the remaining ones, they probably won't care who the commission goes to and even though visiting that website probably just assisted them with the decision-making process, it is probably that website which even tells them there is such a brand called bandwagonhost exists.
You are clearly trying to be smart by registering for a personal account with no signature to make sure nothing is tied up to your company's reputation in this argument, I am sure this isn't the same account you used to post all your ads, etc. Is that something absolutely correct to use personal account on addressing matters related to your company? I don't think so. But should LET ban your account for this? Absolutely not.
By the same token, if I go to a shoe store and trying to buy a pair of Nike, the salesperson told me instead of Nike they have Adidas and I ended up getting a pair of Adidas even without him demonstrating how wonderful Adidas shoes are, should I be happy to put his name down as the sales who helped me so that he can earn his commission? Absolutely yes.
I'm still not getting how this is considered cheating at all - except for maybe dcc being a pedant over whether the customer has to click a link directly in order for it to count, or something, just so he doesn't have to pay out.
@dcc, I trust you are cancelling and refunding all of the customers that signed up due to his affiliate link, since you aren't paying out and they allegedly signed up 'under false pretenses' or whatever?
So this discussion is mainly about whether it is legal or moral to prevent customers from knowing about the affiliation stuff, or in another word, whether customers have the right to know that they are visiting via an affiliated link.
I not quite sure about if it's illegal, but I do support that it's immoral (at least in our chinese culture).
@dcc, I think a possible solution would be to display some notice to visitors when they arrived from an affiliated link. And you could also display some notice about your affiliation policy before they submit their order.
too much KFC
I agree, but then I saw guys like Serverbear doing this (masking affiliated links, not the embedding script part) all day long and yet no one complained and yet this guy does the same and everyone is accusing him of being "immoral"...
Not defending anyone but I do think that is at least biased if not outright racism.
You missed most of the thread I think. It's no longer about masked links. I also agree with their reasoning on masking as they presented a case I had never heard. I don't have much to say about serverbear, I've slept since then and aren't we all allowed to evolve 2 years later?
Right, now it is about a VPS company that does not want to pay for legitimate affiliated sign up because the customer did not sign up directly after visiting the site (even though they probably heard of BandwagonHost through that website).
Sorry for being sidetracked a little.
It became about imbedding the code in a tag so that it loaded the page in the background, that was the actual claim. Big difference from masked links. But it's all settled now. Everyone is happy. No race cards necessary
That's not how I see it. According to the access.log screenshot, pages for digitalocean, chicagovps, myrsk, iniz, etc, were all referrers for the bandwagonhost affiliate link. That means the link existed on all those pages (well not necessarily, since the bot could have been supplying fake referrer information, or the access.log could have been doctored, but I'm going on the assumption that these are not the case).
Why would an affiliate link for bandwagonhost appear on a competitors page? I sure can't think of any reason, aside from trying to cheat the system.
Sure, it's possible that the eventual signer-upper heard about bandwagonhost through this guys website. But it's also possible that they heard about digitalocean (or chicagovps, myrsk, or iniz) via this guys website, and then later heard about bandwagonhost somewhere else. And in that case, either:
That somewhere else did not have an affiliate link, and so bandwagonhost is losing money by paying a referral fee to this scammer.
That somewhere else did have an affiliate link, and potentially bandwagonhost is paying the referral fee to the wrong guy (if the fee is paid to the first referrer, the scammer is getting it when they shouldn't be -- if the fee is paid to the last referrer, then things are OK and the right guy is getting his money)
I think this guy should be very happy that bandwagonhost has unsuspended his account, I know I sure wouldn't have.
@dcc
Did your terms of service say that cookie stuffing will result in affiliate termination?
If it did not then you had no right to terminate him!
who needs a right to terminate, i drive a taxi for 10 years, I terminated a passengers service on the freeway, kicked him out of car at next freeway off ramp.
Guys, this was already resolved on page 2
Ab use? You got banned for using your abs!
This.