eBay is once again making waves in the affiliate community with the most recent tidal wave of deciet crashing on the shores of Shawn Hogan. You may know Shawn Hogan as the owner and operator of the shadowy webmaster forum DigitalPoint which boasts a dazzling array of con-artists, schemers and scammers from all over the globe. It seems Mr. Hogan himself now stands accused of taking part in an elaborate scheme to defraud eBay’s affiliate programs whilst the program was under Commission Junction’s watch. Could it be possible that there is a link between the recent class action lawsuit against Commission Junction? Could it be that a band of rouge black hat webmasters and affiliates were operating out of DigitalPoint forums and they devised a sinister plan to rip off other affiliates while ripping off the auction giant eBay?
Here’s a sampling of the buzz from around the blogosphere.
As far as I can tell, the story originated from Charles G. Mullen’s blog and he was the one who also started the thread at Shawn’s own DigitalPoint forums. Charles’ blog cited this site with a pdf file of the court documents.
Monty’s Mega Marketing hit the front of Sphinn with a regurgitation of the factual elements of the story.
The ever eloquent Linda Buquet of 5 Star Affiliate Marketing blogs added one of the most significant entries in the Shawn Hogan cookie stuffing saga with an exceptional post that takes the cheated affiliate’s perspective against the black hatters who are creating havoc in the affiliate marketing industry.
Further on the line, Zooped.com tagged the story with some heavy handed keywords such as low life, piece of sh!t, scamer, scammer, Shawn Hogan, theif. Wow, somebody else must have been banned at DigitalPoint :-) (thanks again Shoemoney)
According to Justia Federal District Court Filings and Dockets (the most reliable source I could find), the suit was filed on August 25, 2008 and a summons was issued to defendants Shawn Hogan, Brian Dunning and Kevin Dunning on August 26, 2008.
One of the defendants in the case, Brian Dunning has appeared on CNN when he was the CTO of Buylink Corporation. His website claims “I participate at whatever level you require. I’ve done everything from providing $7.5 million in venture capital, to hiring the right exec team, to sitting down and personally coding; and everything in between.”
Suprising, there’s not mention of cookie stuffing found in his resume :-)
The initial court filing claims that DigitalPoint Solutions had developed software that not only stuffed visitors browsers with eBay cookies but that they knew what they were doing was illegal because they coded the software never to stuff the same visitor’s browser more than one time to avoid detection. DPS accomplished their cookie stuffing by using a code generated image that did the dirty work before sending the image headers and displaying the 1×1 pixel image. The use of iFrames which is a traditional method for accomplishing cookie stuffing was avoided as to not arouse suspicion from eBay and Commission Junction.
Clearly this all shows a knowledgable intent to defraud eBay and Commission Junction, not to mention to steal other affiliates commissions from right under their noses.
On the funny side, here’s some of the most hilarious comments from the DigitalPoint and other threads…
joh1 - Shawn and others who took part in this, if you all did this; you all have my respect.
Tobidotman - People told me this forum was garbage, but it’s good to me, but i don’t want to be associated with a thief, yet i don’t know the full story.
edenz - Hats off…. Shawn.. Today I have become one of yours fan. I hope we could meet one day.
timsdd - maybe you could bake him a cake with a saw in it
kristeejo (at V7n)- bet they won’t have cookies like that in the ebay prison. hey - if he goes to prison wonder if ebay will let us bid on his bond?
Regardless of these two other defendants and Shawn Hogan’s efforts to stuff affiliate cookies, it is my belief that the true responsibility for tracking affiliate commissions lies with not only the affiliate management network but the actual merchant themselves. I can’t believe that eBay would be so slack that they never bothered to question commissions they paid out until now. Could it be that eBay is experiencing financial turmoil and they are clutching at straws to make ends meet? The recent events surrounding the eBay/EPN “night of the long knives” affiliate termination saga certainly paint a disturbing picture for eBay’s future.
eBay’s stock has plummeted from a 52 week high of 40.73 to barely keeping head above the 20 per share mark. That’s a decline by almost half of their value and they are keeping pace with Google to become one of the biggest tech stock disasters since the dot com bust sank many a fortune in a sea of sorrow back in the late 1990’s. If eBay were riding high like they were two years ago, they might overlook something as boring as cookie stuffing affiliates but today, eBay is out for nickles and dimes and they have shown they are ready to unleash their lawyers on black hat punks far and wide.