Got this in my inbox from the “IRS”:

After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of $93.60. Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 6-9 days in order to process it.

A refund can be delayed for a variety of reasons. For example submitting invalid records or applying after the deadline.

To access your tax refund online, please click here.

Regards,
Internal Revenue Service

Never mind the fact that I didn’t even do my taxes yet, or that my refund is usually 4 digits, but when you click on the link given, it takes you to an online form that’s hosted on an Internet Radio site called 90sAndNow.com.

What’s this? The Internal Revenue Service’s attempt to make their agency more hip and cool by handing out refunds to the tune of Backstreet Boys?

I need better filters for my email.

Tags: 90sandnow, backstreet boys, email, internal revenue service, internet radio, irs, phishing, scam, tax refund, web forgery
Categories: Tangled Webs
 
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Black-hat affiliate marketers follow a common pattern in their efforts to liberate you of your money. Once they decide on a niche, they then sign up for the most lucrative affiliate programs that appeal to that particular niche, and then they’re off to work their dark magic. As a case study, let’s take a look at how such marketing was done for appetite suppressants, specifically Hoodia.

Now if they’re the sort to go apesh*% nuts in their marketing campaign (and the more successful ones usually do), their next step is to buy dozens upon dozens of domains that have the kind of keywords they’re looking for. Since they want to market Hoodia, the domains they buy might look like this:

…and on and on and on. Literally hundreds of domains may be bought prior to launching their campaigns. Once that’s done, they begin the process of building landing pages for each domain. These pages take on the appearance of a normal looking website, but there are certain distinct characteristics they have that can help us detect whether it’s authentic, or whether it was built by an affiliate spammer. Here’s one example. It purports to be a Hoodia Review site, but there are several telltale signs that should give you pause:

• The page has a vanilla or light appearance. Content is light, dry and impersonal.
• There’s no contact info.
• The date shown on the top right is automated, made to appear as if the content is continuously being updated when it isn’t.
• None of the external links are organic, but are routed using a cloaked redirect. Simply put, an organic link means the actual, natural link to a site. Instead of a simple, organic link however, a redirect is used to hide what’s actually an affiliate link. You won’t know the actual link address until you click on it, and by that time a cookie will likely have been placed in your browser, so even if you backtrack and end up purchasing the same product another day, the affiliate marketer may still receive a commission, depending on the rules of the affiliate program he’s using for that link.

Now take a look at the table near the bottom, listing the ratings for each product. You can bet that it’s suspect. The ratings are completely arbitrary and are based on absolutely no user input at all. This isn’t a Consumer Reports type of site where extensive testing was done to determine the quality of a product here. The affiliate marketer simply made it all up. The top picks are probably only top picks because they offered the best payouts for him.

Note that the links in this table are ALL affiliate links too. Aside from having no user input or testimonies where individuals who’ve tried these products can relay their personal experiences, there’s no other external link of any kind to any editorial source (except for Google Ads of course), and that’s all by design. The affiliate spammer doesn’t want any external link to compete with the affiliate ones, that way he can be assured that the only links you’ll be clicking on are the ones that will make him money. Wasn’t that thoughtful of him?

Once the game has been set up and the landing pages are ready to go, it’s just a matter of running a series of PPC (pay per click) and SEO (search engine optimization) related campaigns to bring targeted traffic to these fake review sites.

Now think about it. There are a countless number of these affiliate marketers all competing to get a commission out of you, all using similar methods. Put them all together and what you have are literally hundreds to thousands of fake websites polluting Google’s search results, especially when it involves a niche that is notoriously prone to this kind of spam. That’s why when you do a search for “hoodia reviews,” you could go ten pages or more into the search results before finally finding a site that’s actually real. And maybe not even.

Hopefully though, what I’ve written here will help you keep a better eye out for these fake, affiliate based websites. Just remember, if you visit one of these sites and happen to click on an affiliate link, make sure you clear your cookies afterwards. That way if you actually do decide to buy the product in question, the affiliate spammer won’t receive any credit for it.

Tags: affiliate managers, affiliate marketing, affiliate network, affiliate programs, black hat, campaigns, case study, commission junction, diet pills, expose, fake reviews, hoodia, landing pages, niche, niches, scammers, scams, spam, spammers
Categories: Tangled Webs
 
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A while back I wrote an in-depth post on how an online scammer was promoting cures for ulcers, shingles, warts and whatnot, all packaged in eBooks you download for a fee.

It’s time to take that a little further and dissect how these scumbags run their games online, especially when they’re working as affiliate marketers.

One particular affiliate marketer recently clued his audience in on how he might typically run his campaigns, and what he reveals is pretty telling. It starts out by picking out what affiliate programs they want to join, which is often accomplished by joining a major affiliate network like Commission Junction, and then performing a search for affiliate programs that offer the highest payouts in the niches they’re interested in.

In this case, diet pills were chosen. The marketer then set out to build what’s called a landing page (in this case a landing page is a website that’s designed to encourage the visitor to click on affiliate links and eventually buy the products mentioned, resulting in commission profits for the marketer.) Look at what he writes:

…I used a review page. I included those offers in a list, and picked an order I wanted. Based on the EPCs my affiliate managers told me, I put the highest offer as the #1 and called it the “Top Rated”, and then the lowest EPC I put at the bottom and rated “Good Choice”. They each were rated 1 to 5 stars. The top rated was 5 stars, and the bottom of the list was 3 stars. You don’t want to rate everything five stars or else it looks fake, and people can tell.

He built a fake review page with a ratings system that had nothing to do with the quality of the products in question. They were actually rated in terms of what would generate the most profits for him!

I sold myself as a legit review site that was there to help the visitor find the best diet pill for them.

In truth he had no interest in helping the visitor make an informed decision at all, but every interest in getting their money. Virtually no effort was made to research the quality of the products he was marketing, or provide original content that weren’t merely borrowed advertising slogans. The only thing that mattered was the bottom line: converting visits to profits. That he would lie and provide misleading information to do so bothers him, not at all.

It’s disconcerting to see a 19 year old punk exhibit such moral ineptness so early in his life, perfectly content in sacrificing his integrity and promoting low quality goods that pollute the Internet, just so he can churn a good profit. And why not? After all, he has already raked in close to a million dollars already with his “marketing” efforts. But then again, drug dealers do pretty good for themselves as well. So do scumbag lawyers. And spammers. And the Russian mob.

This post is already a bit long, so in another post I’ll analyze how these “landing pages” operate, and provide a live example so readers can learn how to successfully detect whether a website was built by an affiliate spammer or not. Stay tuned!

Tags: affiliate managers, affiliate marketing, affiliate network, affiliate programs, commission junction, diet pills, expose, fake reviews, landing pages, niches, scammers, scams, spam, spammers
Categories: Tangled Webs
 
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And I don’t mean bland either, I mean boy howdy f’ugly ugly.

Seems I always have to do some considerable digging before I can find a profile of someone who didn’t look they were the product of a genetic experiment gone horribly wrong. Why is this? Out here in the real world, I don’t have to take two steps before running into a bonnie lass I’d like to club and take home (and I would too if it weren’t for those damned assault laws.) Yet when it comes to these online dating sites I feel like I’m trapped inside a Twilight Zone rerun.

Now before you go bashing my head in with a 2 x 4 here, I happen to think the men on these sites are even uglier… including me.

I’m convinced part of it has to do with the fact that if you got a girl who is A) drop dead gorgeous, and B) has a heartwarming personality of an angel from heaven, then why in God’s name would she need to use an online dating site? Men from all over the world would stampede to her hometown and start gouging each other’s eyes out for a shot at her. She’d have the pick of the litter.

Nope, what we’re seeing on these sites are the leftovers. Girls who couldn’t attract a guy’s attention probably because they all mistook her for being a guy. Or maybe because they weren’t enthralled by the thought of listening to her rant on about feminist power and why all men should be disemboweled just for being men. Or maybe it’s the mention of an angry ex-husband who owns a gun and likes to drink, all while assuring her prospects that yes, he really did stop drinking this time, and he fully realizes that it’s over between them, so no need to worry.

Mainly though, I think it’s the profile photos they choose to use (the recent ones, not the ones showing how you looked when you were ten years younger and 300 pounds lighter, as if I’m expected to believe those 90s outfits are still stylish even today.)

Look, I understand not everyone is photogenic. I know one girl who tends to look pretty bland in photos, but in real life she is absolutely gorgeous. Sometimes, the camera just wants to be mean.

But when I see some of the photos these girls pick out to use on their dating profiles, I’m seriously convinced many of them have a drinking problem. It doesn’t help that the photo they chose to use actually shows them being drunk either. And yet I can’t tell you how many times I keep running across pictures like this. They’re always in some kind of bar somewhere, holding up kegs of beer and making contorted facial expressions at the camera that tells me either someone just grabbed your bunny boons, or you truly are one batsh*% crazy chick.

It’s not even cute when men do it, but when girls do it it’s downright scary. Here’s some advice ladies (and I use the term loosely): those profile pictures of you giving the camera the finger because you were completely hammered from sampling 13 different alcoholic drinks don’t make you look pretty. They don’t make you look cute or sexy or whatever it was you thought the picture was meant to evoke. If you want the kind of guy who’s never seen a “Girls Gone Wild” video, then please STOP acting like you were one of the girls that starred in one.

Ok, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, how about the sober photos? Here’s the thing: if the only photo you put up is a shot of you 100 feet or so away from the camera, so far away in fact that your image doesn’t take up more than 3 pixels of space on my monitor, then give it up. I know you’re ugly. Why else why would you use a photo that not even the forensics labs at the FBI could successfully enlarge?

And then there’s the dark photos. You know, the webcam shots of yourself that you took at 2 in the morning with only the glow of the monitor to light your face. So now, not only can I not be convinced that you’re pretty, I’m also starting to wonder whether you’re really alive either. Really, when your profile pic looks more like the ghostly image of an angry Lizzie Borden than anything resembling living flesh, I can only suggest one thing: instead of putting it up on Match.com, send it to Ghost Hunters instead. They love that sort of thing.

*Sigh*

I really shouldn’t complain though. If surfing through a sea of mind bending ugliness is what it’s going take to drive me offline and actually try approaching girls in real life, then maybe this is just the kind of medicine I need.

Tags: dating, girls, online dating, Photos, profiles, ugly, women
Categories: Romance and Relationships
 
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Well then you’ve come to the wrong place!

But thanks for playing.

Tags: charlize theron, humor, jessica alba, Jessica Simpson, Photos, prank, rachael ray, reese witherspoon, sarah michelle gellar, Videos
Categories: Comic Relief
 
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Heath Ledger’s passing was truly tragic, but I have to ask myself, what is it about being rich and famous that induces so many people into thinking, “Hmmm, my life really sucks, let me start throwing down a few and shoot me up some happy juice.”

Naturally, I blame women for this.

No really, think about it. Who else on this planet can take a guy who is:

• Wildly successful, good looking and famous, with his face and name gracing all the major papers on a regular basis…
• Has hundreds of thousands of adoring fans…
• Has enough money to buy his own island and all the toys he could ever want…

…and then effortlessly cause him to wake up in a pool of his own vomit, wishing he had never been born?

It was probably a woman who drove the Joker batsh*% insane.

Whatever caused poor Heath Ledger’s downward spiral, I can guaran-damn-tee you that a woman had something to do with it.

So what lesson can we draw from this? I would suggest this: if you ever become rich and famous and want to truly enjoy your success and live a long, healthy and happy life, then you need only follow one rule: Stay the F*&% away from women.

Tags: death, drugs, evil, heath ledger, joker, junkie, women
Categories: Romance and Relationships
 
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