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What to do about disturbing new WSO trend...

by WillR
15 replies
This is something I have noticed happening just recently. I have now bumped one of my WSO's over 69 times. On each of the last 4 bumps I have noticed this new trend. People are now using popular WSO's in the WSO forum to cloak affiliate links using both visible and invisible images. They simply copy a post from somewhere else in the WSO and repost it along with some affiliate links posing as images, both visible and invisible. These image urls lead to affiliate links for companies such as Bluehost and Hostgator.

You can see two examples below from WSO's bumped just recently. One is mine, the other is not.





Note: You won't see those blue image squares unless you are using Safari.
This poses a problem in itself as most people are unaware this is happening.

As I say, it has now happened the last four times I have paid for a bump and each time I report the posts and they get deleted. That's great. But new accounts then get created and the same thing happens the next time I bump and it's happening from a variety of ever changing usernames. I know it has only been 4 times for me but I also know this is happening with other popular WSO's as can be seen from my screenshots above.

It's only early days but if this keeps up I will have to think twice about bumping my WSO's. First of all I can't be bothered having to go and report 3 or 4 posts every time I bump my WSO, second of all some of the crap they are posting like images of girls in bikinis is not going to give a great impression to those potential clients who land on my WSO just after I bump it. Although the mods do a great job it can sometimes take a while for the posts to be removed just because of timezone differences etc.

So, what can be done about this? Is it time to ban images in the WSO forum from all people except the OP of each thread? I may be wrong but the only time I now appear to see images being used by posters in the WSO forum is for some form of self promotion whether it be WSO award badges or affiliate image cloaking, etc. Would we really miss images? Are there any better solutions? I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.
#disturbing #trend #wso
  • Profile picture of the author ibacklinkpro
    Freaking SPAMers, if only they would put their creativity to something useful, they could create a better world!
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  • Profile picture of the author Dwayne Morrison
    I read about this somewhere. It's called cookie-stuffing. They'll put their affiliate links in images and when users purchase a WSO, their affiliate link will show up as opposed to the appropriate link. Essentially, they place cookies on users site via placing images in forums to steal affiliate commissions.
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  • Profile picture of the author ibacklinkpro
    Coming from the guy who is promoting stealing. Hehe.
    Stealing? Haha, that's just marketing buddy... AdWords testing proves that more people clicked on an ad like what my signature is than something else... I don't really think it's possible to steal backlinks...one may also get the same backlink as someone else... but this is all irrelevant to this post...
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    Here is How to Steal Your Competitor’s High PR Backlinks:
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  • Profile picture of the author HeySal
    It's not just images. Someone was reposting my posts in Ken's fundraiser thread. It had no links showing - but was for cookie stuffing somehow. I don't understand how it works -- but know the people doing it don't need to be in here. If you see a repost of a post by a different person report it immediately.
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    Sal
    When the Roads and Paths end, learn to guide yourself through the wilderness
    Beyond the Path

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    • Profile picture of the author theantihype
      The technical term for the hack is CSRF: Cross-Site Request Forgery.

      While not as prominent as XSS, it is still very serious. Banks have been especially susceptible to this exploit.

      Scenario:

      User logs into back account.
      User then goes to check email account, bank session and cookies are still live.
      User gets a CSRF image exploit, essentially creating a POST request using the valid, stored authentication issues.


      Example:
      <img src="http://bank.example.com/withdraw?account=bob&amount=1000000&for=Fred">


      You can learn more at Wikipedia or other noteworthy places (Wikipedia isn't)
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      • Profile picture of the author DeborahJ
        Banned
        I have seen it a couple of times..They usually utilize the image of an attractive female, usually scantily clad, to attract clicks..How cheap can you get?
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        • Profile picture of the author Kalyken
          Banned
          Oh wow.. I haven't noticed anything yet.
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        • Profile picture of the author abubakar89
          Originally Posted by DeborahJ View Post

          I have seen it a couple of times..They usually utilize the image of an attractive female, usually scantily clad, to attract clicks..How cheap can you get?
          But a woman in bikini would not get me to click the image as I know 99.9% its going to be something spam
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          • Profile picture of the author TheHotChick
            Banned
            f@#%ing spammers, giving pictures of scantily clad women a bad name. What's the world coming to.. True though, I'm definitely not clicking either.

            Originally Posted by abumadni View Post

            But a woman in bikini would not get me to click the image as I know 99.9% its going to be something spam
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  • Profile picture of the author cardine
    There's been a huge influx in xrumer (a forum posting bot) powered cookie stuffing recently.

    That's what all of this is.
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  • Profile picture of the author TheHotChick
    Banned
    How disturbing. I can't post any bikini pics on here without everyone assuming I'm cookie stuffing.

    Seriously though, that is lame. And the original post is right... doesn't look good to potential buyers when they see spammy replies all over your WSO like that. There should definitely be more spammer-unfriendly prerequisites you have to meet before you can post pics, videos & links on threads.
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  • Profile picture of the author Steve Peters Benn
    I'm guessing this is only happening with 'hit and run' accounts, not established users?
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  • Profile picture of the author ATH
    boobs and water and surfing. clearly they are targeting me.
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    • Profile picture of the author Paul Myers
      Will,

      If you're ready to stop selling in the WSO section because you think your customers will turn against you over forum spammers hitting your threads, you don't place a lot of faith in your customers.

      This is definitely becoming more common. I've deleted at least 150 posts from the cookie stuffers today alone. And they're no longer limiting themselves to hosting companies. The last one I looked at was mostly Amazon cookies.

      I've got a contact at Amazon interested in closing some spamming affiliate accounts.

      In the mean time, I strongly recommend that people set their browsers to refuse 3rd party cookies. And keep reporting those posts.


      Paul
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      Stop by Paul's Pub - my little hangout on Facebook.

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