Digiresults Attack

by 104 replies
139
The purpose of this is to notify you guys of a scam that is being employed through Digiresults. If you utilize them as your affiliate program you need to read this. I know about this because I was attacked just yesterday.

Someone tried to implement a pretty elbaborate scam that I "partially" fell victim to. All of sudden I received an unusual amount of affiliate request, I approved the first two because I figured they were normal but shortly after 4 more or so came in. What caused this to alarm me was all of the email addresses were from yahoo and their affiliate ID's were all sequential. (i.e 6232,6233,6235, etc)

Later on the day was when I truly realized that it was an attack, they had someone purchase a product through their affiliate ID and almost immediately disputed the charge through Paypal. So the money that was paid was on hold but since I had money in my paypal account they still got a commission from the sale. As a result, I did the same thing they did and disputed the commission and got my money back. It continued today with another flood of affiliate request, needless to say I rejected all those request.

I just wanted to notify you guys and be cautious if you get a quick flood of affiliate request. Check the email addresses and see if the ID's are sequential, if they are reject them immediately and notify Digiresults.
#main internet marketing discussion forum #digiresults #scam #scam artists
  • You know, I knew something was up as I got a flood of affiliate requests a couple of days ago. I did not approve any of them. Then, today I got like nine more requests, as you said, all from a Yahoo address.

    Thanks for notifying us about this. I'm going to reject all those affiliates and contact Digiresults.
    • [1] reply
    • Yeah good thing you didn't it would've been disasterous, that's a good idea because that's what I did and they need to be aware of this scam.
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • The odd thing is that I've been flooded with unknown warrior plus affiliate requests since last night. Very odd. Each user who has requested approval seems to be asking a ton of other warriors as well.
    • [2] replies
    • Hi,

      Not a scam but a new plugin that build a autoblog on wordpress using the Warriorplus system

      I purchased last night and populated a new site with +- 400 WSO's in 1 day

      I questioned the supplier of the WSO and it is pending approval

      Here is the WSO
      • [2] replies
    • I would be careful they are probably targeting here to.
  • Thank you for the heads up. I will probably just deny anyone from yahoo just to be on the safe side.
    • [1] reply
    • It wouldn't be a bad idea...
  • Forgetting the fact that your post violates Rule #1 of the forum, have you actually contacted Andy and team about this?

    I am sure he would like to be aware of this problem.

    Also, this...

    makes it sound like DigiResults is complicit. Not good at all.

    Thanks,

    John
    • [ 10 ] Thanks
    • [3] replies
    • I agree with this. Andy and his group have went above and beyond for me so far. Your title is misleading and what GlobalPro said.
      • [ 2 ] Thanks

    • I am glad to see that someone else recognized this before I did!!!

      A better subject would be, "Scammers Utilizing a Product Offered through Digiresults to defraud WSO vendors"

      I have notified the helpdesk of a need to change the title of this thread.
      • [ 4 ] Thanks
      • [1] reply
    • Yes they have been notified and actions have been taken, nowhere did I say that they haven't done anything about it. The keyword is "through" meaning done on that particular website. As Christopher shared he was attacked as well so it's an apparent problem that "everyone" should know about.
  • Hmmm this is not good, are you the same guyy that posted about this a week ago. Thanks for the post though.
    • [1] reply
    • No I'm not this just happened to me, if someone else posted about it then it's apparently a growing concern.
  • Its just sad to be honest.

    So you just have to be careful about your affiliates. That is pretty much all you can do.

    To date there is no viable solution to this issue. Only other thing you could do is delay the payments and pay out after a certain period of time but that would really just lower number of affiliates.

    Worst thing about this is that it can really compromise ones paypal like that.

    Paypal might think, you are a security threat to them and providing crap to customers.
    • [1] reply
    • Yeah I totally agree...
  • Thanks for the public service announcement guys.

    I appreciate everyone's support in the thread so here's a quick update to what's going on.

    So someone decided it would be a good idea to create a WSO autoblog system. It wasn't.

    We never approved anyone automating sign up and registration to affiliate programs on DigiResults and I'll bet good money Mike Lantz didn't either for WSO Pro.

    The reason DigiResults doesn't provide a reject button after you have approved people is to protect the affiliate. A vendor shouldn't be able to turn commissions off part way through a promo. That way affiliates can feel that much more confident promoting on our network.

    If you have approved any of these accounts please contact support@digiresults.com and we'll help you clear it up.

    There shouldn't be any need to though since we've network wide banned all these rubbish accounts.

    Cheers,

    Andy
    • [ 5 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • Forgive me if I'm wrong about this, but it seems as if this thread has TWO subjects:
      1. Digiresults and unscrupulous "affiliates."
      2. Some WSO that could be used to exploit a vendor/affiliate relationship.
      I'm concerned, personally, by the first.

      I, too, have experienced what the original poster experienced. A couple of months ago, I was contacted a number of times by potential "affiliates," all of whom I approved.

      I mean, why wouldn't I? I know, stupid assumption and question. Some systems, like RAP (which I've used), allow anyone to become an affiliate, with NO approval. So I thought it was safe. Obviously not.

      So I approved a handful of affiliates. Then the orders came in. And then PayPal put holds on funds. Then they reversed the transactions (not sure if that's the correct term). In all the cases, the "customer" had claimed that they had not purchased the item.

      Just recently, I got another handful of requests. I approved them, too. (Yeah, I know. Stupid me.)

      Same thing. I'm currently looking at 3 sales that are in dispute.

      Now, if I had sold 100 or 1000 of these products, 3 disputes wouldn't be horrible. But all 3 sales recently made are in dispute. 100%.

      This sucks.

      Now, I will say that this is not digiresults' fault. How could it be? But there are some shady characters abusing their system and the system needs to be better about handling these issues. Meaning, of course, that we should be able to disapprove of an affiliate (or at least report them through something other than an email that can take more than 24 hours to respond) when that affiliate is suspected of some sort of fraudulent activity.

      It would be difficult, I think, to prove that the affiliate had anything to do with the disputed transactions, other than that the "buyer" had bought through his affiliate link.

      So how do we, as just people who want to sell products, deal with this?

      I'm in fear, especially with all the recent chatter about PayPal banning/deactivating/holding accounts and funds, that my PayPal account is in jeopardy.

      I don't mean to suggest--at all--that this is a digiresults issue. The same could happen with any system that has an affiliate system built in. But it is happening at digiresults and I'd like to be reassured that something is being done there.

      Otherwise, I really have 3 choices:
      1. Disapprove (or simply ignore) affiliate requests (kind of counter-productive because this is WHY I use digiresults)
      2. I could personally contact each affiliate asking for approval, but that could get daunting and still isn't anywhere near perfect
      3. I can just leave the system
      What say you, Alex?
      • [ 2 ] Thanks
      • [1] reply
  • Hey Guys,

    All those requests are not because of digiresults.com it was sent as buyers were using a plugin from my WSO (which has been closed by now).

    I am in contact to Mike, to see if any kind of alteration to plugin could let all members use it. However in case if it is completely rejected by Mike, then i will straight away refund all present buyers.

    I apologize for inconvenience this may have caused.

    I have created a system which is mutually benefiting all WSO sellers and affiliates. However my mistake is that i should have shown it to Mike or Allen before launching it publicly.

    Anyways, i owe all buyers full refund and that would not be a problem in any case. Also, all buyers will get email explaining the whole situation and then refund will be started in evening (its morning at my side).

    My intentions was to create a simple system using which WSO affiliates can promote the different WSO's using Google adwords and other traffic systems which is not possible right now.

    Again, i am really sorry to all the WSO sellers who are suffered in anyways by my plugin.

    Regards,
    Carson
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [2] replies
    • Hi Carson,

      I send you a PM. I would be nice if this plugin is approved as in 2 days traffic to a new domain increased from 2 visitors a day to before I redirected the site to 75 visitors on the 2nd day

      In the second day a lot of the WSO's posted on my site showed hops between 6-19 a day so this will be beneficial for WSO sales and affiliates alike.
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
      • [1] reply
    • I really liked your plug in. It is a very nice way for warrior plus affiliates to promote the wso they sell. I am not sure what the problem is. Just the attacks did not make any sense at all.
  • Andy,

    Thanks for the feedback, but just so I'm clear...

    Are all these requests from legit affiliates who do intend to promote my products but have just used software to auto apply, or are these illegitimate affiliates who have no intention of promoting my products and are using auto apply software to try and get free products by purchasing through their aff id?

    I am still not getting the connection between this WSO software and affiliates showing up on Digiresults.
    • [2] replies

    • My understanding is that the software auto-applied to ALL offers in Warrior Plus and DigiResults to become affiliates.

      Then the software ran ads for all of the affiliate offers in those two sites.

      The scam part was those jackwad affiliate scammers who buy, get the affiliate commission, then cancel the transaction.

      The plugin simply opened a number of product vendors up to a this breed of scammer.

      I think the plugin might have survived if it did not auto-apply to every offer.
      • [1] reply
    • There are people using the auto-apply nature of it to sign up for lots of accounts and attempt to scam people.

      That is precisely why we have the approvals process in place. So you can talk to potential affiliates and get to know them.

      Good affiliates will appreciate you getting in touch. Scammy ones will moan about it.

      Your sales don't come from the long tail of people that never reply to your emails anyway, they come from the action takers who engage with you.

      Take 2 minutes and get in touch with people before you approve them.

      Andy
      • [ 2 ] Thanks
      • [2] replies
  • Ok, so the bottom line is I shouldn't be rejecting all these new affiliates with Yahoo Emails right away... some of them might be legit. That's what I wanted to know.

    I'm going to make more of an effort to contact affiliates now as I didn't know I could do that on Digiresults.
    • [1] reply
    • That's what I've gathered from all of this as well, and I will contact those affiliates who recently applied to judge their legitamacy as well.
  • Guys,

    I guess i need to clear it a bit again (as all affiliate requests were sent using my plugin) though this plugin is already closed however i think i should share it:

    1) Scammer: I do not see any way how "scam" is related to the working of my plugin. Plugin simply send affiliate request, vendor have to decide it to approve or not (it's not automatic approval, vendor will select to approve or reject), once approved your WSO will be posted on sender's WPblog using the warriorplus as payment method (All sales, affiliate commissions are handled by warriorplus). There is no scope of scamming here. Also from my 2 days testing, 95% of my auto affiliate requests are approved without any question. Reason being, at the end of the day WSO sellers are "sellers" and the more affiliate you get brings in more probability of increase in sales.

    So question is what is the point of posting WSO's on blogs?
    As we know there are numerous product in WSO section which even converts @ 50% which is way way higher then clickbank or any other merchant. So, now the affiliate can use third party advertising system i.e Google adwords, facebook, PPV etc because in the "Display URL/Destination URL" he can put his own blog link.

    Secondly, affiliates can use the link of there blog to show the offer rather then whole WSO thread.

    Every request you approve as seller would post your WSO as a blog post on affiliate's blog and thus your WSO get better search engine presence.

    As per a warrior above:

    "There are people using the auto-apply nature of it to sign up for lots of accounts and attempt to scam people"

    Scamming doesn't have to do anything with "auto apply", if scammer want to scam he can simply login to warriorplus, keep on clicking "request" for affiliate programs and then scam. If scammer want to scam,he can do it right on to the WSO itself. I mean this particular thing have nothing to do with scamming, it is a simply requester and poster of same data, as in WSO. So what ever can happen to WSO's can happen to the blogs.

    "I think the plugin might have survived if it did not auto-apply to every offer."

    I have actually contacted Mike Merz and offered him any and every alteration needed in plugin to make it compatible with WarriorPlus. Awaiting reply.

    Finally a very reputed warrior recently done a truly unbiased review about the whole situation. Please have a look

    Thanks,
    Carson
    • [2] replies
    • I find it interesting that all your discussions has helped me a lot. Thank you for sharing your ideas here.
      • [1] reply
    • The problem is through your plugin everyone received a flood of affiliate request and a "scammer" saw it as an opportunity to get themselves in the mix. So now there is no way of telling who is genuine and who isn't without contacting them first, but when you have 10 or more request coming into your email box and will have to email each one individually is becomes time consuming and almost not worth it.
  • Is it just me that was under the impression that WSOs were supposed to be a special deal for WARRIORS......

    Not just a marketplace where people could spam their affiliate links to the wsos all over the internet.

    If there is an army of affiliates promoting your wso to anyone and everyone - what happened to it being a special deal not available to the general public?

    This whole idea seems to go against the purpose of the wso section.
    • [ 4 ] Thanks
    • [2] replies
    • Andy,

      I am finding that I get a lot more affiliate promotions for WSOs, as opposed to outside offers.

      Not saying that's a bad thing, but I do see the difference.

      Thanks,

      John

    • look on warrior plus and the top 10 sellers are not selling to warriors of course they are selling to the public...whats good for some aint good for the rest..thats the way it is...period...
      • [ 1 ] Thanks

  • Andy: I generally regard the Warrior Plus affiliate program as an opportunity to have my offer mailed to others.

    The people who are signing up to be affiliates with Warrior Plus are always Warrior Forum members, and to my knowledge, most of them have lists comprised mostly of other Warrior Forum members.

    Until you mentioned it, I never considered that some affiliates were putting the offers on a website, but I suspect those people are a minority of the whole.

    I am very selective about who I approve as an affiliate in the Warrior Plus section, and I know that a number of other WSO are equally as cautious, and some even more so.

    There is a lot of talk among vendors to not approve affiliates who do not have a proven track record inside of the Warrior Forum.

    When Carson Rathi first put the plugin to work for himself, it raised a lot of eyebrows, and many people were asking how he intended to promote the WSO's.

    Personally, I ignored his request for affiliate status, and many others were raising red flags about him.

    I think you have raised some very valid concerns, but I also think that most serious vendors take the Warrior-Only very seriously.

    While vendors can never be 100% certain, we can be and usually are pretty confident that our offers are going mostly to other Warriors.
    • [1] reply
    • That's the way I feel and it's good to see that your experience is the same as I sometimes wonder if the noise has got so loud that people have stopped being selective.
  • Am I the only one that has mixed feelings about the "price goes up after x number of sales" ? Creates scarcity and obviously a clear winner for the vendor. But it's basically rewarding first come first serve. Sorry, I know you bought my products in the past but you were too slow so you get the crappiest price. Doesn't seem to promote long term loyalty but maybe I'm wrong? Maybe not so bad if you offer it, at the best price, to your past buyers before the wso launches?
    • [ 2 ] Thanks
    • [2] replies
    • Banned
      [DELETED]
      • [ 2 ] Thanks
    • I understand what you mean as well, you would think your previous customers would get the best price first.
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
      • [1] reply
    • Nope, I don't like dime sales either. I tried it with my last WSO on the suggestion of another, and that WSO was really profitable. The sense of urgency obviously makes people buy. Having said that, I don't plan on doing it again because I don't see the sense in two people paying a different price for the same product.
      • [1] reply
  • It's unfortunate that the scammers are always trying new tricks, hopefully everyone will be aware of this trick
    • [1] reply
    • Yeah it is unfortunate and I'm trying to make as many people aware as possible.
  • This just happened to me as of July 11th (1) non-affiliate sale and July 12th (2+3) thru the same affiliate and are hold at PayPal. I found out about this doing a search on the forum and I see this thread started 6/22. So it's apparent that DigiResults has known this was happening for a while. I got plenty of promotional emails and the tax form email from DigiResults. Nothing that would have warned me this was going on. Did I miss it or was nothing sent. Did any other vendors get an email from Digiresults disclosing this was happening.
    • [1] reply
    • Yeah they are aware of what's going on you need to notify them via email of that particular affiliate/ID so they can freeze their account or ban them from the site all together. Nothing publicly has been emailed out about this situation but that's part of the reason for posting this. Just be careful of who you approve especially if you get a sudden flood of request and email them to see if they respond.
  • Very good comment, ExRat, thanks for taking the time to reply.
  • Thanks for that post and advice,

    I just posted two products at Digiresults and would have been flattered with the requests!

    BUT NOW...I am forewarned and forearmed...thanks again
    • [1] reply
    • Your welcome I'm glad this was helpful.

  • Exact same thing happened to me this week. I knew something was fishy when I received an affiliate request, a sale and a refund request in that order all within a one hour period. Followed by a stream of new affiliate requests, none of which I approved. Now I have to respond to paypal. If the refunds are given through Digi, the money is returned properly, but when they go through Paypal, you end up paying the entire refund and the affiliate keeps their commision. Instead of making money, the transaction costs you whatever amount you pay your affiliate.
    • [2] replies
    • It's crazy because I've received another wave of request this week as well. So you don't lose money, as whoever purchased your product did you need to dispute the affiliate commission and you'll get it back. I disputed it and received the funds back.

    • This free video course requires you to tick the box confirming that you agree to the terms. But I don't see any terms on the page ??
  • I'm getting a new wave of requests now as well. Almost all of them with Yahoo email addresses. Not sure what to do about it at this point. I'll probably just reject any potential affiliates with Yahoo addresses. Sucks for those who might be legit.
    • [1] reply
    • Yeah the same here and I will probably do so as well...
  • Fell into this trap myself today..

    Three sales from the same buyer, two of which are credited to an affiliate. All of which are on hold at Paypal

    Just got another sale too.. and I have a feeling it's gonna get put on hold as well.


    Some things that you guys might be able to do to mitigate the risk while DigiResults gets back to you:

    In your paypal account:
    limit the Fraud Management Filters (more on those here: https://cms.paypal.com/cms_content/U...yPalFMF_US.pdf ) so that people from unverified paypal addresses are placed in review and people from unexpected countries are flagged or placed in review.

    That's the only thing I could think of... I'm waiting for someone from DigiResults to get back to me and tell me how to go about this, but i figure that will at least stop any other transactions from dinging the crap out of my paypal account in the mean time, and (hopefully) give me a leg to stand on to show that I was attempting to prevent this should paypal decide to limit my account because of it.
    • [1] reply
    • Thanks for this I will look into activating this on my paypal accounts as well.
  • Yup, I got hit too. Fortunatley only the one transaction. Since I have the same product on a WSO, I have just disabled it on Digi untill they do something to sort it. I guess should only accept affiliate requests from friends as they recommend on WSOs.

    Here's reply I got from DigiResults...

    Hi Dave,

    Thanks for getting in touch with us.

    It looks like this "affiliate" was a scammer who used stolen credit card or bank data to purchase products through his own affiliate link and get the commission.

    If you get in touch with paypal, tell them about this suspicion, and ask them what you can do to resolve the situation, and if you can file a dispute to get the commission back from the affiliate.

    Please let us know if you have any other questions.

    Cheers,
    • [1] reply
    • WOW! This is apparently a bigger problem then I originally thought...
  • Yeah, the same thing just happened for me.

    They purchased the same products many times and in fact, my paypal account was negative.

    Really not the best feeling in the world when you log in to your paypal account and instead of seeing hundreds of dollars, you see negative balance and that there are many multiple disputes opened.

    I did not like it!

    Be careful,

    Matt Poc
    • [1] reply
    • Im sorry to hear about your losses, try disputing all of the charges to get your funds back. That definetely sucks and something has to be done about this.
  • This is very frustrating. I have a negative balance in my PayPal account due to funds being on hold. If DigiResults can not come up with a way to manage this issue then they need to delay paying out commissions instead of instant payouts.
    • [1] reply
    • Dispute all of the commissions paid out and you will be able to recover your funds. That's what I had to do, if these people want to play that game you have to play it back on them so they don't get your product for FREE and get paid for pretty much stealing your product.
  • I had to share this, I received another affiliate request from someone with the email address "@" I mean really?
  • *EDIT* Please see next post.

    Just as a heads up to anyone still fighting with Paypal to get your fraudulent commissions back out of the affiliates...

    I did NOT win my disputes through their online measures.

    Moving on, no point in focusing on the negative, but if you get hit with this it is
  • Sometimes it pays to get on the phone with someone that knows what they're doing... Amazingly, Paypal came through and refunded all the transactions today when I talked to their Unauthorized Claims department...

    Literally took 15 minutes and then he said "There you go, I refunded all the transactions"..

    Good on you Paypal. James is a happy camper.
    • [1] reply
    • thanks for providing the helpful info
  • Thank you for notifying all of us. Well we really do have this initial hunch of something fishy going on...but hearing proof from someone who actually experienced it really helps a lot specially in being more cautious and what to look for.
    • [1] reply
    • You're welcome I just want people to be aware of this issue.
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  • 139

    Digiresults Attack

    The purpose of this is to notify you guys of a scam that is being employed through Digiresults. If you utilize them as your affiliate program you need to read this. I know about this because I was attacked just yesterday. Someone tried to implement a pretty elbaborate scam that I "partially" fell victim to. All of sudden I received an unusual amount of affiliate request, I approved the first two because I figured they were normal but shortly after 4 more or so came in. What caused this to alarm me was all of the email addresses were from yahoo and their affiliate ID's were all sequential. (i.e 6232,6233,6235, etc)