I received the following email early this morning…
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RE: Important Legal Notice Regarding Commission Junction’s Affiliate Network
If you joined or were a member of the affiliate marketing networks operated by ValueClick, Inc., Commission Junction, Inc. and/or Be Free (collectively, “Defendants”), between April 20, 2003 and the present, you may be a class member in Settlement Recovery Center et al. v. ValueClick, Inc. et al., No. 2:07-cv-02638-FMC-CTx, a lawsuit which is pending in the Central District of California. The Settlement Notice informs you of the Court’s certification of a class for settlement purposes; the nature of the claims alleged; your right to participate in, or exclude yourself from, the class; a proposed settlement; and how you can claim an award of advertising credits under the settlement or object to the settlement. The proposed settlement will resolve claims that Defendants failed to adequately monitor Commission Junction’s Network for the use by third parties of software that does not comply with Commission Junction’s (“CJ”) Publisher Code of Conduct and that is intended to steal or divert commissions from publishers on CJ’s network (“Non-compliant Software”), failed to adequately monitor or prevent third parties from engaging in the theft or “hijacking” of commissions from Advertisers and Publishers on CJ’s Network, and failed to make sufficient disclosures regarding the existence of Non-compliant Software and commission theft, resulting in losses to both advertisers and publishers on the CJ Network. The proposed settlement will provide a monetary recovery to eligible class members. For class members that currently maintain an account on the CJ Network will receive payment through payments or credits deposited or applied to their CJ accounts; eligible class members that no longer have accounts on the Commission Junction Network will receive a check for an equal amount. If you are a member of the class, your legal rights are affected by whether you act or do not act. You should review the Settlement Notice as soon as possible as there are several important deadlines that you must meet to take certain actions in connection with this proposed settlement. In particular, the deadline for filing an objection or excluding yourself from the proposed settlement is September 30, 2008. For further information, please refer to the Settlement Notice. For a copy of the Settlement Notice, click on the link, or visit the case website at www.CJSettlement.com |
I followed the link in the email and found what appears to be a class action lawsuit against ValueClick and Commission Junction regarding commissions that had been hijacked between 2003-2008.
Has anybody else received this email ?
I recieved it, but the link appears to go to an unrelated site, so I didn’t click on it. If it’s a scam, I’m puzzled as to what they might get out of it. Your CJ login details? Does it ask for those when you click on the link?
Yes…did CJ become tradedoubler? memory not good - prefered CJ’s website!
Whats this all about? pinch of salt required?
G
I make $30,000 per month with CJ as an affiliate, but on occassions I have went without any commission. It was always hard to understand if I was earning that ammount of commission that for 3 or 4 days in a month it could be virtually nothing. I have made repeated requests for information about why this is and have never been properly informed. On payment day I always have delayed tracking and this day usually the 17th of the month is always the lowest day of the month for commission and I have always suspected that the commission for these days were not being paid.
I received one as well.
I received that email today. Not clear on what it actually mean though.
@Jean - they’re not asking for any login details and as far as I can see it’s an actual Class Action suit brought against CJ and ValueClick by two publishers who are claiming that the defendants didn’t police their network for hijacked commissions.
@James Patterson - I’ve noticed similar issues with CJ when eBay affiliate was still in the network but I never really had much success with CJ except for the eBay program. Honestly, I can’t say things are much different with eBay using EPN or PJN because clicks+earning seems to be all over the place.
I think this must have something to do with “cookie stuffing” which has been a relative evil in the “traffic exchange” and PPC industry.
How it works - some CJ affiliate places a page with a hidden Iframe containing a valid CJ affiliate link. When a visitor lands on the stuffed page, the IFrame calls the affiliate page (ie: an eBay listing or GoDaddy page) that sets the tracking cookie to the stuffer’s affiliate ID. I know a lot of PTS (paid to surf) and PTR (paid to read email) scammers have been using this technique and I’ve even seen a few shady forums pulling this stunt to steal commissions.
A lot of watchdogs in the GPT (Get Paid To) industry are very adamant about weeding out sites that engage in click-fraud (entcing people to click PPC ads) and cookie stuffing with IFrames.
I was under the impression that most affiliate programs had dealt with framed landing pages and such. I’m assuming CJ didn’t track this properly and the plaintiffs have evidence that proves CJ’s TOS states that these actions violate their acceptable use policies but they have done nothing to enforce it, thereby causing publishers and advertisers significant losses.
From what I understand from that site, you don’t need to do anything unless you wanted to exclude yourself from the settlement?
I KNOW I wasn’t getting most of my commissions - because I placed orders for people many times. Commission Junctions would keep closing my account saying I hadn’t made anything when I knew different. I finally gave up after the 3rd time they pulled that stunt and never renewed my account.
I never got this e-mail or any notice but was notified by a friend that knew I’d had trouble with Commission Junction & Be Free so refused to ever use them again. Does anybody know how I can find out more to make sure I’m included in this? I doubt that I still have the records, it was a few years ago.
@Ralyn - The site for more info on the CJ class action is :
http://www.CJSettlement.com
I just received a notice via snail mail yesterday regarding the lawsuit. I also dropped CJ about four years ago because of lackluter conversions but only started using them again a few years later because of the eBay program.
I think they’re still having issues with tracking, especially the GoDaddy program because I’ve had clients click through my site to GoDaddy and buy domains right in front of me and I never received the commissions.
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Hi Dave…
I hope only you can help me.your statement is clear and good. actually i’m from india. i recieved a notice via post on 13 september. i dont know what should i do now?please reply me through my mail id which is *edited to prevent spam*. i thank you very much.
Raghul.G
@Raghul - I don’t think we’re supposed to respond to the notice unless we want to be excluded from the class action. I assume that since they have a snail mail address or email address they will use that as a means to contact us if/when there is a settlement.
If anybody has any better informatio, please chime in.
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I had signed on with CJ but never put actually went beyond registration… I received the snailmail notice and want nothing to do with any of this… should I just ignore it or bother to write and request removal?