Affiliate marketing is receiving some not so great publicity…again. This time it comes from Rik Ferguson over at TrendMicro blog as he reveals a Facebook Account Upgrade Scam, where fan pages promote a Gold Facebook account upgrade. Of course, there…

The recent attack on RockYou.com’s database opened many people’s eyes to a number of security flaws that exist on even some of the more popular web sites. To begin with, the RockYou social network’s database was susceptible to a Structured Query…

Purveyors of malware and BlackHat SEO’s have been pulling in a great deal of headlines lately. It seems anytime something makes the news, there is a report of illegitimate web sites targeting keywords associated with the story to draw visitors…

In the last post I provided some background on offers and the confusion they may cause. I also pointed out the potential for scams. In this article, I’ll put a little more focus into the complexity of the offer systems and…

There’s been alot of hype and debate around the concepts of virtual goods and offers due to a few high flying companies which have been media darlings. The highest profile company in question is Zynga, athough other social gaming sites…

There have been lots and lots of posts around about the FTC shutting down known spam-botnet- child-pornography-hosting provider Triple Fiber Network (3FN.net), (aka Pricewert LLC, APS Telecom, APX Telecom) yesterday affecting 15,000 websites. The FTC said they were actually advertising…

I had the pleasure of listening in to yesterday’s roundtable hosted by Brian and Carolyn of ShareASale.  The topic of the round table was affiliates’ use of downloadable toolbars and what was acceptable to operate within the ShareASale network and…

Fraud definitely is on the minds of online merchants this season. In fact, a survey sponsored by the Merchant Risk Council (MRC) conducted by the 41st Parameter Inc., revealed that 84% of the respondents believed that there will be a slight or…

Chris Boyd (aka Paperghost) reported last week on his Spyware Guide blog about a dodgy offer for a “Free Online Batman Game” that in reality installed Zango and a crappy demo version of an ancient game that you could have downloaded…

This concept is in my head for far beyond 2 1/2 years and I admit to myself that I am not going to do anything with it myself anytime soon. I outlined the general idea to several companies and people,…