Affiliate Fraud

Ah, we feel this one at Shmoop. We've had "partners." Nice, well-dressed people. They get paid a commission to sell a premium month o' Shmooop. But they find all kinds of ways to defraud us (and others). Dating sites for example, often have to pay for clicks, and that affiliate site can hire a small army of Somalian clickers to fake click to the site. They charge the dating site full affiliate fees, and the site gets little for their dough.

Fraud happens on many fronts. Stolen data, cloning/stealing content...yeah, we feel this one big time, having closely spelled domains (gooogle or schmoop). All felt. And then, since affiliates often know a lot about customers, they can trick them into downloading a virus onto their hard drives, or stuffing their cookies with malware. So affiliates can be good, and they can be oh so bad.