An Affiliate Marketer from the Ground Up

By now I would think that anyone that has Internet access, and especially those involved in affiliate marketing, have seen the news that Shawn Hogan, Brian Dunning, and Todd Dunning are being sued by eBay for cookie stuffing.

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) – Three men defrauded eBay in a “cookie stuffing” scheme that made it appear the men’s companies should be paid commissions, eBay claims in Federal Court. It sued Shawn Hogan and Digital Point Solutions, Todd Dunning and Kessler’s Flying Circus, and Brian Dunning and Thunderwood Holdings.
eBay says the men devised software programs that, “unbeknownst to the [computer] user, redirected the user’s computer to the eBay Web site without the user actually clicking on an eBay advertisement link, or even becoming aware that they had left the page they were previously viewing. As a result, the eBay site would be prompted to drop an eBay cookie on the user’s computer even though the user never clicked on an eBay advertisement or even realized that their computer had ever visited the eBay site.”
The complaint continues: “once the cookie was stuffed on the user’s computer by one or more of the defendant’s any future revenue actions initiated by that user when the user later visited eBay intentionally, and not as a result of any advertisement places by defendants, appeared to be eligible for commissions payable to one of the defendants”.
eBay claims the defendants also used deceptive means to prevent it from discovering the fraud, and to conceal it. eBay demands compensatory, treble and punitive damages. It is represented by David Eberhart with O’Melveny & Myers.

This comes on the heels of some (300) eBay affiliates being banned from the program, yours truly included. I was reinstated, after I presumeably was checked out thouroughly and cleared of any of this, or anyother bad behavior against eBay and/or the eBay Partner Network.

Personally I’m elated to see this case coming to light. This can do nothing but help the affiliate marketing industry as a whole. I only hope that any and all companies involved will follow eBay’s lead, and do everything possible to get these aledged criminals thinking twice before commiting these crimes. These crimes aren’t ones that just take a relatively few dollars out of eBay’s deep pockets, they affect so many more innocent people, and hard working affiliates.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 1st, 2008 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.