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gazette
Issue # 201 (07/21/2003)
Net Economics & EthicsLooking inward at the effects of the Internet on the Economy, as well as tackling some issues related to security, fraud, theft, and generally "being bad" online... |
| Scumbag of the Week |
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CACA (the perfect name for this piece of crap) is what's known as a "clicking agent." It's designed to perform two tasks, both of which are completely fraudulent -- One is meant to mislead, while one is meant to steal money.
Essentially, CACA is a bot, which will "hit" any page (or all of them) of your Web site, pretending on each hit to be a different user. It uses an army of proxy servers to hide behind, so that each time it hits your site, it has a different IP number. For all intents and purposes, it looks like a different user each time it visits your web server. Part of its goal is to simulate traffic, stuffing your log files and artificially inflating reports to online tracking services (such as Alexa). This makes you appear to be busy as Hell. People ask all the time, "How do these brand new PPC search engines hit the ground running with so much traffic?". This may be part of the answer -- they're pretending to have lots of visitors, when in reality, the majority of their visitors are faceless bots that will never buy anything from your site.. The second aspect of this system, is that it will click on various links on the pages of your Web site. The program's author tells you how to set it up to click your banners, your affiliate links, and your PPC sponsor links. Each hit looks unique, is nearly impossible to detect as fraud, and has the sole purpose of generating a click. Advertisers on the Internet, promoting via banner ad or PPC ad, think they are paying for legitimate traffic -- traffic from a real user that will visit the Web site and perhaps buy something. CACA essentially drains advertiser accounts dry, without ever sending a single visitor. In the end, the advertiser pays a fortune, the PPC makes money on the clicks (but will lose the advertiser due to the lack of ROI), and the CACA user rakes in the commissions. CACA can be configured not only to use proxy servers to spoof its IP number, but it also can also be set up to keep the number of clicks within a reasonable percentage range, to spread the total number of clicks over a "reasonable" period of time, and further to randomize the time between the clicks. All of this is designed specifically to defraud the advertiser, the PPC, and the publisher, while lining the pockets of the thief using the program. A quick browse of their Web site reveals the shady nature of the author's intent. Digging into their forums, you'll quickly see the low class of user that relies on this technology to rape legitimate online businesses. There's nothing that a capitalist like myself hates more than someone rigging the system and taking the true market out of the mix. This is a joke. Well, actually, it's not. It's serious business -- and an economy killer. As a group, let's see what we can do about getting these dolts shut down. Any volunteers amongst the programmers out there in Gazetteland can contact John Cokos personally (Private Message me from the forums, userid "jcokos"), and maybe we can collaborate on some detection schemes to counteract this menace. CaCa's Website: http://www.clickingagent.com/softcaca.html |
Read the Scumbag of the Week section from the Last Issue or in the Following Issue
JimWorld Member comments and feedback ...
Posted On: 04/19/2006 04:35
Posted By: alfie1848
Posted By: alfie1848
Thank you for your review, I will benefit from your suggestions. I have one
question though. You said "In the source, you really need a meta description
for each page just as you do with any web site." How do I do this with blogger?
question though. You said "In the source, you really need a meta description
for each page just as you do with any web site." How do I do this with blogger?
Posted On: 04/19/2006 04:43
Posted By: alfie1848
Posted By: alfie1848
Thank you for your review, I will benefit from your suggestions. I have one
question though. You said "In the source, you really need a meta description
for each page just as you do with any web site." How do I do this with blogger?
question though. You said "In the source, you really need a meta description
for each page just as you do with any web site." How do I do this with blogger?
Posted On: 04/19/2006 04:57
Posted By: alfie1848
Posted By: alfie1848
Thank you for your review, I will benefit from your suggestions. I have one
question though. You said "In the source, you really need a meta description
for each page just as you do with any web site." How do I do this with blogger?
question though. You said "In the source, you really need a meta description
for each page just as you do with any web site." How do I do this with blogger?
Posted On: 04/19/2006 04:10
Posted By: alfie1848
Posted By: alfie1848
Thank you for your review, I will benefit from your suggestions. I have one
question though. You said "In the source, you really need a meta description
for each page just as you do with any web site." How do I do this with blogger?
question though. You said "In the source, you really need a meta description
for each page just as you do with any web site." How do I do this with blogger?
Posted On: 01/04/2008 08:04
Posted By: boltonuv
Posted By: boltonuv
This "Scumbag of the Week" article is irresponsible. I had not trouble at all in receiving the following response from SpamArrest:
"Hi James,
Thank you for your email.
James, what you see there is absolutely wrong and is done to misguide our users and our new customers from Spam Arrest. We have over 1.5 million customers with us including you. You have been with us for a very long time, James. You can check with any of your contacts whether they have received any junk emails from us. We never do such a thing and its completely against our ethics! We hate spam as much as you do and so, along with stopping it, we make sure that none of our customer's emails are noted as spam. We warn our customers from sending bulk emails about the fact that their contacts might misunderstand their bulk emails as spam and will turn against them and Spam Arrest. A company following only such healthy practices can never do such a thing like spamming. What we value the most is our customer's trust and we will make all efforts to retain that in the best way possible. We never admit your personal information to any third party under whatsoever circumstances. You will find a whole lot of misleading things like this in Internet, James. We have friends and foes like anyone else in this planet.
I hope you will understand us the best way possible, James. Please do let me know if you need any further clarifications regarding this.
Best Regards,
Peter
Technical Support Specialist
Spam Arrest"
In the 3 years that I have used SpamArrest, I personally have never received one complaint from anyone that has been 'spammed' from any theoretical 'spam list' that SpamArrest may have created. I think that their statement above makes it clear that they would not do this.
I behooves you to publish a retraction.
Jim Bolton
"Hi James,
Thank you for your email.
James, what you see there is absolutely wrong and is done to misguide our users and our new customers from Spam Arrest. We have over 1.5 million customers with us including you. You have been with us for a very long time, James. You can check with any of your contacts whether they have received any junk emails from us. We never do such a thing and its completely against our ethics! We hate spam as much as you do and so, along with stopping it, we make sure that none of our customer's emails are noted as spam. We warn our customers from sending bulk emails about the fact that their contacts might misunderstand their bulk emails as spam and will turn against them and Spam Arrest. A company following only such healthy practices can never do such a thing like spamming. What we value the most is our customer's trust and we will make all efforts to retain that in the best way possible. We never admit your personal information to any third party under whatsoever circumstances. You will find a whole lot of misleading things like this in Internet, James. We have friends and foes like anyone else in this planet.
I hope you will understand us the best way possible, James. Please do let me know if you need any further clarifications regarding this.
Best Regards,
Peter
Technical Support Specialist
Spam Arrest"
In the 3 years that I have used SpamArrest, I personally have never received one complaint from anyone that has been 'spammed' from any theoretical 'spam list' that SpamArrest may have created. I think that their statement above makes it clear that they would not do this.
I behooves you to publish a retraction.
Jim Bolton
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