Your affiliate is hacking and spamming the interweb

[James_W]

Hi

Aware of this discussion and looking into the issues raised.

If anyone would like to enter into an email discussion with me surrounding it then my email address is James.woods@bet365.com.

Also, all performance marketing managers at bet365 are extremely responsive and proactive in solving both individual affiliate issues and wider affiliate community ones.

Thanks


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[James_W]

Hi

Have taken further action here and as you are all aware from previous issues I won't share further details (hopefully reassuring for your own partnerships with us), thanks for raising.

Have a good weekend all.

James

[universal4]

Thank you James,

A response much sooner might have seen less attacks leveled in the direction of the GPWA, since it gave the appearance that nothing was being done.

Rick
GPWA Little Joey


Edited to add: In the end I knew you guys would eventually take positive action, although I am disappointed a response was not as forthcoming as many would have preferred.

[thebookiesoffers]

Thank you James,

A response much sooner might have seen less attacks leveled in the direction of the GPWA, since it gave the appearance that nothing was being done.

Rick
GPWA Little Joey

Attacks lol, go on then, tell the world what GPWA did, not you, Michael and Anthony. Until GPWA start doing stuff I'll keep piping up. I could always bump the brilliant thread when one of the affiliate groups involved in the hacking arrests finally got suspended from here after working with hackers for a year and only getting suspended when arrests were made and the site closed down lol Ultra proactive that was lol

[universal4]

I found this thread quite interesting in the fact that any time and other operator was involved that did not give instant gratification was called all sorts of bad names but when it was this group it was all the GPWA's fault.

I am glad they took action and like I stated previously I knew they would.

I will apologize to the rest of the community, in that I had tried to contact them through the wrong channel, but have been in contact with James and promise I will try not to let that happen again, although I am disappointed that no one responded to any of the long list of emails they must have gotten. I mean others that had posted here must have contacted them right?

Rick
GPWA Little Joey

[thebookiesoffers]

so gpwa did nothing again. glad thats cleared up, well done James and bet365 for sorting it out

The End

[universal4]

It seems to me that it is Bet365 that was slow to respond.

Did they respond to YOUR email about the hacking issue?

I guess no one else sent them any emails about the issue, or they would have responded.

I have already taken responsibility for the thread notification and not getting in touch with James, but I guess when Hannah was here on April 7th it wasn't important enough of an issue to warrant a response.

Rick
Universal4

[thebookiesoffers]

lol why would i email bet365 about it, the great bastions of online gambling (gpwa) hold everyone to account with strict guidelines [insert Muttley sniggering smilie here]

are you on the payroll here, serious question? i see you taking responsibilty when no one else will. hence why i suggested you start your own forum. you may take it to heart as it's obvious you love this forum but im not having a pop at you, you clearly have a passion for this thing. be the puppet master and not the puppet, unless you say you own a %?

[GCG]

My remarks :

1. Sponsor programs are slow to react when confronted with requests to close hackers accounts.
2. The GPWA does not stand behind their own code of conduct as it will cost them money.
3. A lot of webmasters content has been stolen by this individual even from free bets .com !
4. This duplicate content can not be good for our sites and will costs us probably $xxx or more.
5. Rick if you are on the GPWA payroll or not ; you must be compensated for your time otherwise I can not imagine how you can deal with these issues, we village idiots are not stupid. Not saying you are a bad guy at all because you do have the passion for doing things right but you are hampered by the GPWA rules and you are only allowed to do certain tasks.
6. Bet365 could and should have responded much earlier ; they are not under staffed now are they.
7. This low character has destroyed a lot of faith in their program, which does not show much of ethical brand protection from their side.
8. If a lot of GPWA member start posting inactive attitude against programs involved in hacking and / or stealing players, there is not much a community left except for the affiliate managers posting their ads and fun stuff.
9. Have not seen one (1!) program that has no cross selling brands, no negative carry over, no minimum quotas, transparent stats up to and including individual player accounts + deposits.
10. Do not tell it is not worth the time of the "friend" to the village idiots lurking here to post his concerns and more preferably some definable actions.

[Roulette Zeitung]

After my post here in this thread yesterday I received a PM today from a Bet365 representative.
I am not interested in writing a response.

Code of conduct confimation website is not available from Bet365 affiliate website, because the GPWA seal goes not to the code of conduct!
Why not?
It goes to the program detail page (www.gpwa.org/affiliate-program/bet365-affiliates).
Very funny, because now I saw for the first time the unbelievable stupid quota term of this program.
Some would say, the wrong linking was a disservice.
With such quota?
Yes!

So it it is not so easy to find the important content - the code of conduct for this program - that normally must linked with the GPWA seal.

However, here it is:

===> http://certify.gpwa.org/verify/www.bet365affiliates.com

Simply read points 1, 4 and 6 of the 7 points.

The operative words are "laws" [1], "ethical" [4] and "Promptly" [6].

By the way: Since 2006 (!) there are several warnings about the Poker section of Bet365 on Pokerstrategy, one of our most famous German speaking Poker forum because of many problems with cashouts or problems with the money and / or account at all.

No, thank you very much and please stop sending me private messages. I am not interested in puttinng things from the public into hidden communication channels. And if I have the feeling, that someone prefers this, then there is always a reason for it.

"Have taken further action here [...] I won't share further details"

This two sentences dropped down my trust level in this program below Zero ...
... and could have been written also by Fernanda.

Come on, you can do it better!
If you don't wear a skirt but shows a little bit more transparency, then there is a fair chance that you can get some trust again.
At least a chance.

Leopold

[Roulette Zeitung]

you may have, but you are their little Joey on here, not an owner or on the payroll or I may have that wrong. Michael never does anything but make a who posted the previous month thread and anthony is too busy doing welcome and happy birthday threads. that is why most of us laugh at gpwa for their uselessness. In fact you love it all that much why don't you start your own forum where your passion might actually be able to do something

Directing an attack against the GPWA when it is CLEAR that Bet365 (which is a whole lot of affiliates Big Joey's for sportsbooks and casinos) just seems totally misdirected, when it is Bet365 that have ignored the issue.

Rick
GPWA Little Joey

First I thought, you mean "Little Joe".
I am watching every evening one episode of Bonanza.
Greatest western series of all time.
One "Retro"-Broadcaster here in Germany makes it possible.

This time I have to put Rick under my shield.
First of all, you can think what you want, and even if there are differences, but one thing is clear: He never would deliberately lie to someone or cheat people. I am stressing this because this is exception rather than the rule if you look at mankind carefully.

He is the only one of GPWA who voices criticism over programs and especially if stupid quoates are involved. This also applies for new sponsors.

Rick is not sitting behind a $10,000 desk, imported from Black Forest and donated by GPWA headquarter.
He will not receive from headquarter a weekly free ticket for the local honey-bunny show.
No diamonds, no gold chains and no singing telegram every Wednesday in the evening.
He is always in the line of fire and this is no easy job.
You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.

And yes, I am not happy about the fact, that the in-house artist first attacks a large part of the community and now plays the role of a sorehead or that a lot of things remain unanswered even on regular communication channels. But this is not Rick's fault, and Mr. Michael Corfman is mainly responsible here for everything that happens.

So write him a letter, an open letter, perhaps this will help.

Example:

---

Dear Mr. Corfman,

perhaps you can remember me. I am a small cogwheels in the vast and complicated GPWA mechanism and worked hard for your forum so that you can welcome so many sponsors. If you don't remember me, the $5 in this envelope might be a help.

I address you today for a new idea how webmasters can feel not so stressed all the time. The following case is very important to me. I will be more than happy to sent you another $5 if my case will come on the top of the continuously growing mountain of files.

Listen, yesterday ...

---

Morally reference for the content of this post: https://www.gpwa.org/forum/leopolds-...tml#post814873

Leopold

[Sherlock]

I really do not know why again so much hystery here. Someone is deceiving Google with some shady SEO stuff. Well any SEO is shady, because it deceives Search engines by definition and you either do SEO, or you buy traffic or you have no traffic. That is my point #1.

Point #2 is that this is hard to prove. The affiliate might in theory buy some SEO services and then it is hard to hold him responsible or bring evidence.

Yes, I have seen a major problem with the page above (which is now offline for me) that shows the guy is total scammer and bet365 and many other bookies should be aware of him, but not for the reason of manipulation of SERP, which is something we all do. Remember any manipulation of SERP is something that Google forbids and at the same time manipulation of SERP is not breaching the law. Hacking into servers is ofc, but this might be just poorly made websites where the pdf's were uploaded.

What makes me laugh is really the collective hypocricy how there is a legitimate linkbuilding and illegitimate one. There is no difference. Better live with that and accept the world as it is not as you wish to be. I really hate how the affiliates are distorted from the basic thing which is to hold the contract and pay the money promised. I hate the idea where it is affiliates who are the police of the internet. If you do not like this scam, you should have reported it too Google, the page would be deindexed fast. Or you should have looked at the code properly and tell affiliates much more important reason why to ban the crooks. But I refuse the "seo spam" term. Especially by us seospammers.

[Roulette Zeitung]

Addendum to my last post here from today

"Hacking into servers is ofc, but this might be just poorly made websites where the pdf's were uploaded.

I don't know if this statement and some other sentences are based on lack of knowledge but anyway: The result of this sentence is also indirectly mocking thousands of websites owners, containing schools, kindergarten, hospitals, doctor's surgeries, nursing and old peoples homes, all victims of different types of "Hacking into servers", and the facts from the last 2 and a half years demonstrates, that the victims websites are anything but "just poorly made". Even if they would be "just poorly made", then there is no reason to downplay this.

And I disagree with the statement, that affiliates should only look for the money and for nothing else like greedy Zombies who walk without any empathy through the internet.

I also disagree with the statement, that every affiliates shall manipulate the SERPS [because of low quality or not existing content] and that no difference in link-building exists with the result that ethic does not exist in this industry. This general statement might be correct for the poster if he speaks for himself - and it's his freedom to do so - but this statement is not valid for the many or for everybody.

The audience shall not believe, that in this industry only money greed SEO crooks, armed with superficial knowlege but without a sense of responsibility are on the stage.

No, this colorful industry has many other facets.

Leopold

[Sherlock]

Absolutely agree. Any link building with the sole purpose of getting ranked higher on Google is essentially blackhat. I doubt there are many people here who is 100% whitehat and relies on natural link acquisition and onpage SEO.
Ofcourse hacking is hacking and should never be condoned.

Yes, hacking is hacking. But should it be bet365 - or other - affiliates that decide what is hacking?

The article that is being linked from post #2, is this http://searchengineland.com/it-secur...cuments-224941

It says hacking/spamming, without any evidence if it was just "spamming" = e.g.uploading some documents to websites that allow that;or if it was a hardcore hack. Obviously the hardcore hack is hard and nearly impossible to prove.

Also to make things confusing: the term hacking is being used even for some social manipulation, e.g. to persuade someone to put my material somewhere online might be described as "hack too". Remember Kevin Mitnick - the most famous hacker - was using mostly social engeneering. So for example if you go to webmaster of some high rank website and tell him some nonsense, that if he puts link there on your website, it will help him somehow and it will be a lie, then you are a hacker. You are even more hacker than someone who can crack into some server and is called cracker.

While I believe those guys should be banned as I said and I am even persuaded they cracked somehow poorly managed servers, I can not agree we demand from affiliate programmes to do policemen here. Ask Google that is it.

This is not just asking too much by affiliates, this can turn ugly in many ways. 2 examples:

1. The banned affiliate for alledged hacking might take this to a court. There is no evidence he did that. The kids who are doing this until now will probably not take that far, but who knows how it will be in few years when this will maybe spread out.

2. If affiliate programmes ban affiliates for "seo spam", then there is nothing more easy for shutting down your competition than pay some pennies to the "hackers", who would aim those **** links to the higher ranking affiliate portal. I did not say this until now, because it is a good idea for some rogue guys, especially those who did this. But to read whinging here is even more annoying than to live with hackers, so I am sorry. If I were the hacker and affiliate programmes would start to ban me after this thred, I would do start to point the hacked links into portals of all people who particiapte in this thread and report them. (This is why Google never bans sites for black hat seo or why they came with the disavow tool.)

[Roulette Zeitung]

"[...] should it be bet365 - or other - affiliates that decide what is hacking? [...] The banned affiliate for alledged hacking might take this to a court. There is no evidence he did that."

"no evidence"

Very thin ice you are walking on, jurisprudential and morally but a stroke of luck to understand your general position better.

Leopold

[GCG]

I honestly do not care how websites this lowlife has hacked, webmasters should pay attention to this with better security and report him to the authorities / Google etc, cuz I can not stop this even if I wanted to.

This does not mean it is criminal and damaging to the industry and anyone who wants to make money from this should be banned.

What you have not mentioned is that he is stealing my and other affiliates content which he uses to promote his ****** landing pages with and this is not about SEO linking BS.

[Sherlock]

Addendum to my last post here from today

"Hacking into servers is ofc, but this might be just poorly made websites where the pdf's were uploaded.

I don't know if this statement and some other sentences are based on lack of knowledge but anyway: The result of this sentence is also indirectly mocking thousands of websites owners, containing schools, kindergarten, hospitals, doctor's surgeries, nursing and old peoples homes, all victims of different types of "Hacking into servers", and the facts from the last 2 and a half years demonstrates, that the victims websites are anything but "just poorly made". Even if they would be "just poorly made", then there is no reason to downplay this.

And I disagree with the statement, that affiliates should only look for the money and for nothing else like greedy Zombies who walk without any empathy through the internet.

I also disagree with the statement, that every affiliates shall manipulate the SERPS [because of low quality or not existing content] and that no difference in link-building exists with the result that ethic does not exist in this industry. This general statement might be correct for the poster if he speaks for himself - and it's his freedom to do so - but this statement is not valid for the many or for everybody.

The audience shall not believe, that in this industry only money greed SEO crooks, armed with superficial knowlege but without a sense of responsibility are on the stage.

No, this colorful industry has many other facets.

Leopold

Yeah, you would be my whinging target #1, if I were hacker.

Again: it is just your wishful thinking and wishful thinking that there is some kind of pure SEO morality. Laughable. Making money is all about money. Making money in gambling is even more about money. Yeah, lets talk about morality with customers. They pay for their illusions. But deep inside it is about money and b2b contracts.

What your morality suggests is breaching the contracts on assumptions that can not be even shown to court. Forcing affiliates to go that way is insanely dangerous. At court even the darkest SEO is OK (unless hacks by the affiliate is proven). By Google, even the lightest linkbuilding by webmaster is not ok, and there is a penalty. But yeah, keep whinging and be in real hell soon.

I can not care less about the morality talks here, it is an upfront lost game for me. But what really pisses me off is that many people here accuse Bet365 of supporting hackers. That is an incredible nonsense and I can see why Bet365 rather do not say anything more here and why they do not communicate a bit more in general. Those guys are not perfect, but they are far the best affiliates. They feed me, my employees, they have my highest respect for the product and integrity. I do not care how much they pay GPWA. I do not care in whatever they are doing. I know they treat me with respect and pay me and I assume they do the same for other affiliates, unlike many others. So I really do not like them being offended. What Bet365 is accused here of and what is imposed on them, is bullshit.

Now please go on crying and dreaming about nonsenses like white hat SEO. Until the hacker points his links for example here: http://www.roulettezeitung.com/ and reports it. Then you can accuse Bet365 again from the opposite side. And it pays off!

[Sherlock]

What you have not mentioned is that he is stealing my and other affiliates content which he uses to promote his ****** landing pages with and this is not about SEO linking BS.

This can be easily being proved and affiliates have valid and easy reason to ban after that. I did not see that content theft at the website when it was on. I saw another thing and reported it.

[GCG]

I have just asked Bet365 to be proactive and close his account as their affiliate is stealing the content.


Why do not you show us your website, are you afraid the hacker will copy it?

According to their T&C content theft & spamming is not allowed.


"promote illegal activities or violate intellectual property rights or breach any relevant advertising regulations or codes of practice."

"We will terminate this Agreement immediately without recourse for you if there is any form of spamming or if you advertise our services in any other way. You shall not make any claims or representations, or give any warranties, in connection with us and you shall have no authority to, and shall not, bind us to any obligations."

[Roulette Zeitung]

"Yeah, you would be my whinging target #1, if I were hacker. [...] Now please go on crying"

Indeed, you are a very eloquent dialog partner, educated and writing at the highest level.


Now I will come back to the real important persons here on GPWA:

I have to correct myself of what I wrote in this thread:

My impression of

"I am not happy about the fact, that the in-house artist [...] now plays the role of a sorehead"

(Source: https://www.gpwa.org/forum/your-affi...tml#post814930)

obviously is not correct, because there is always the possibility that other reasons exist.

COMMERCIAL BREAK: ===> https://www.gpwa.org/forum/poker-new...tml#post814967

Leopold