ClickAudit Users! - WARNING!

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Anyone who uses ClickAudit to cloak and track their affiliate links may not be aware that Firefox users are receiving a Phishing warning when clicking on a ClickAudit cloaked link in emails.

This is the warning Firefox users get:-

this is the message I get on a big red screen.

Reported Web Forgery!

"This web site at ClickAudit - Free Ad Tracker, Free Link Tracker has been reported as a web forgery and has been blocked based on your security preference. Web forgeries are designed to trick you into revealing personal or financial information by imitating sources you may trust.

Entering any information on this web page may result in identity theft or other fraud."


I emailed Pete Hamilton at ClickAudit and here's what he told me:-

Hello

Thank you for advising us of this situation.

We are aware of the problem and have contacted Google who supply Mozilla/Firefox with the data they use for classifying web sites.

We have no idea why Google thinks we are a phishing web site and until they respond there is nothing we can do.

We apologise for the inconvenience this is causing but things are beyond our control at this point.

Regards
Pete Hamilton
ClickAudit


So it looks like any of you who are using Clickaudit links in your autoresponder series may have a ton of work to do this weekend changing all those links!

Just thought i'd pass this on. If you've seen a drop in your afiliate sales to your list of late, this could be the reason.

Roy
#clickaudit #firefox #users #warning
  • Profile picture of the author Josh Anderson
    Anytime you use cloaking and tracking links especially in email promotions you might want to be aware of other security statements made not only in browsers but also in email clients.

    There are other reasons not to use certain cloaked or tracking links in email promotions as well for example...

    Anytime you use Aweber tracking links in your email Thunderbird marks them as a scam.
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    • Profile picture of the author Tamer
      Originally Posted by Josh Anderson View Post

      Anytime you use Aweber tracking links in your email Thunderbird marks them as a scam.
      I thought I was the only one!
      Tamer
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      • Profile picture of the author grumpyjacksa
        i guess this means that even proper cloaking of affiliate links will be flagged.

        how the hell are we supposed to track anything ?

        i started using tracking ( yeah, clickaudit - after i saw interstitials at trackthatad ) when i started suspecting ( and i was right at the time ) that not all my clicks were noted in my affiliate programs.

        even recently i had a case of an affiliate program claiming 0 clicks by the time i sent them 14 ( and i did make sure my info was correct ). if i wasn't tracking it, i could have ended up sending them sales i never got paid for.

        i guess the only option left is for affiliate programs to track where their visitors come from, so we can drop the affiliate links, and we as marketers must track outgoing clicks . i have seen it done at squidoo, where they give you a breakdown of outbound clicks.

        but it still comes down to a lot of work, because with a tracking service, you open up your user cp, and you can see the results of all your efforts at a glance. this way you will have to check individual pages .

        unless someone , maybe the MIGHTY GOOGLE , will come up with a script we can install on our pages, to track it. it would be a nice addition to analytics.....

        i have found a blog post on using a function in a wordpress plugin, but it is still a lot of work, for just one site. and only for wp blogs.

        for the meantime, i have come across a post by........

        darren at problogger..

        he uses mybloglog to track out-clicks. you can use it for sites and blogs.

        and yes, i also have a $#$#@#@#%load of links to change............

        Now what do we do with our affiliate links ?
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        • Profile picture of the author grumpyjacksa
          ok
          ok
          ok
          the MIGHTY GOOGLE actually does have something in place.

          my sincere apologies to the 900 lbs gorilla.

          you can get the info here : Google Analytics: Track Outbound Clicks Seo Daily Updates

          Now that still leaves us with affiliate links as long as a month-end grocery receipt slip.............

          any suggestions ?
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          • Profile picture of the author Dan Grossman
            There are affiliate programs already that track based on referrer and therefore don't need tracking URLs. There's no way to promote them directly in e-mail or offline, though.
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            • Profile picture of the author Roy Carter
              Josh - I didn't realise that about Awebber. I use Getresponse. Anyone noticed similar problems with them.

              Anyway, like Grumpyjaksa it looks like i'll be spending the weekend changing a 'shedload' (I think that's what he meant) of links!

              Bang goes my planned trip to the beach (

              Roy
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              • Profile picture of the author Dan Grossman
                Originally Posted by Roy Carter View Post

                Josh - I didn't realise that about Awebber. I use Getresponse. Anyone noticed similar problems with them.
                Pretty much any time a link doesn't show the same URL as it points to (which is the case with many e-mail services that convert all URLs to tracking URLs for you), Thunderbird will mark it as a scam.
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                • Profile picture of the author Roy Carter
                  Originally Posted by Dan Grossman View Post

                  Pretty much any time a link doesn't show the same URL as it points to (which is the case with many e-mail services that convert all URLs to tracking URLs for you), Thunderbird will mark it as a scam.
                  Sheesh! What are affiliates supposed to do these days?

                  Roy
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            • Profile picture of the author grumpyjacksa
              Originally Posted by Dan Grossman View Post

              There are affiliate programs already that track based on referrer and therefore don't need tracking URLs. There's no way to promote them directly in e-mail or offline, though.
              you're right

              unless you route them through a presell page 1st

              like you have to do with EZA anyway.
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              • Profile picture of the author Roy Carter
                Grumpyjacksa - So you're going to have a ton of links to change, like I am. What are you going to change them to though?

                Roy
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