CJ affiliates Spybot Search & Destroy Immunize is killing your Sales!

Posted on October 17, 2007 in Affiliate Tips, CJ Affiliates  

So a Few days ago on one of my computers i was getting popups randomly. So i went and downloaded Spybot search and destroy to have it search for adware etc.. and i noticed they had an immunize function now. After search ran i had it immunize also just to cover all bases. Well the next day i was coming to my site and clicked on my Yahoo search marketing banner on the right and noticed it went to a dead page. I thought hmmm….. thats odd. Maybe my link is old or something, went in and put in the new code and still went to a dead page.  I tried both browsers IE and Firefox… both dead page.  I gave CJ benefit of doubt and thought maybe just an issue and will be resolved in few minutes or hour. Well i forgot about it untill the next day, I tried again still a dead page. So i decided to email CJ about this. Below is the email response I got.

Dear David,

Thank you for your inquiry. In reviewing the link I am unable to replicate the error. The link is routing to the correct destination page. The server is not timing out on our end. This appears to be a problem with your specific computer or browser. I would advise to check your security settings. If they are set too high, they can prohibit certain images and/or web pages to be viewed. In addition, you may want to try accessing the links through another computer.

According to another publisher experiencing a similar error, the latest version of Spybot Search & Destroy v. 1.5 immunizes against our links. They had to remove the immunization for our links to work.

While you may not be using Spybot, I would assume that it may be due to similar third party security software which is not allowing the links to route through our servers to the destination page.

Thank you for your patience and please let us know if we can be of any further assistance.

Sincerely,
Commission Junction Client Support

After this email I go an Un-Immunize my computer, and what do you know the links all now work!!!  So be warned all CJ affiliates if your users are using Spybot Search & Destroy and Run the Immunize it will block your links and cost you sales!!!!! 



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Comments

24 Responses to “CJ affiliates Spybot Search & Destroy Immunize is killing your Sales!”

  1. TheMadHat on October 17th, 2007 8:36 pm

    Sounds like another reason to disguise affiliate links. Not sure precisely how it works but it certainly is worth looking into.

  2. Geoff on October 17th, 2007 8:39 pm

    I heard of a similar thing happening to clickbank hoplinks a few months ago. Clickbank actually corrected the problem (surprisingly) by changing the technology of their links. Somehow they are now immune to the sweeper softwares.

    You would think if clickbank (who are usually behind the times) could do it, then CJ should be able to as well.

  3. Vijay Teach Me $$ on October 18th, 2007 7:41 am

    I just ran spybot yesterday with the updated version and was tempted to use the immunization but went against it.

    Thanks Geoff for giving us some hope.

    Vijay

  4. hanji on October 18th, 2007 10:30 am

    We should do some testing with cloaked links (maybe with javascript, htaccess mod_rewrite and simple PHP header location). I’m curious if it just looks at the URL, or is parsing the header destination. If it’s intercepting the header destination, then cloak will be a non-issue in the end.

    This sucks hard. Also, I’m curious if CJ is planning on doing something different. It must be matching domain against signature database of some sort, that should be easy enough to change at CJ’s end.

    hanji

  5. 5starAffiliatePrograms on October 18th, 2007 12:00 pm

    Way back when, CJ switched to all the unique new domain names to counteract Norton blocking affiliate links. So I wonder if they are blocking by domain coule be something else in the URL structure. Could someone that has the program test to see if Linkshare and/or Azoogle is blocked? Also sometimes these anti-spyware programs have a file you can look at to see which domains are blocked. That would be helpful to know too.

  6. Spybot Search & Destroy is Killing CJ Links - 5 Star Affiliate Marketing Blogs on October 18th, 2007 12:08 pm

    […] Read the rest and follow the conversation to see if javascript or link cloaking helps or if people can find any other type of work-around. CJ affiliates Spybot Search & Destroy Immunize is killing your Sales! […]

  7. Artvision on October 18th, 2007 3:14 pm

    I suppose I’m the “another publisher experiencing a similar error” :) I opened a ticket at CJ few days
    ago and let them know about the problem.
    Unfortunately looks like they don’t care too much
    about the problem. Maybe they still can’t understand
    that CJ also lose a lot of money having in mind that
    there are X.XXX.XXX people that have installed on
    their PCs Spybot Search & Destroy.

  8. Andrew Johnson on October 18th, 2007 5:54 pm

    Sadly spybot search and destroy is the best anti-adware software out there. You just cant safely use the web without it plus Firefox.

    On the ironic side, this is the same software thats supposed to get rid of adware which steal affiliate links and website traffic.

  9. V.K. Rajagopalan on October 19th, 2007 12:51 am

    Thanks for publishing this news.

    I was, in fact, planning to install Spybot Search and Destroy.

    Now, I will have to understand the pros and cons better before I go ahead with it.

    Raj

  10. SonicReducer on October 19th, 2007 12:56 am

    I’m on both sides of the fence on this one. As a current affiliate, I think it sucks. As a past systems admin, Spybot used to save a bunch of junk from getting on my user’s networks.

  11. CPA Affiliates on October 19th, 2007 7:03 am

    I cant say for sure that it blocked azoogle links but it sure did keep me from logging into my azoogle account never got around to testing azoogle links BUT I assume if it was keeping me from logging in, it was probably blocking there links…

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  13. tyler on October 23rd, 2007 7:50 am

    Sounds like a good reason to run a mac.. lol

  14. DavidYin on October 23rd, 2007 5:40 pm

    We should inform CJ or Spybot to solve this problem. Otherwise we will loose money.

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  18. Ginene on October 28th, 2007 12:08 pm

    I just noticed all of my links aren’t working but I dont have Spybot on my computer. I sent a ticket to cj to see what they say.

  19. Craig on October 30th, 2007 1:19 pm

    It makes you wonder how many sales you have missed out on.

    Ouch!

  20. Rich on October 31st, 2007 1:21 pm

    I ran into this back in February. I had a site that was to go live on March 1st and was having some friends and family test the site, they all reported that some of the ads (only CJ affiliate ads) “didn’t work”. It took two weeks to figure out that it was Spybot. I didn’t have all of Sybot’s “features” turned on so the links worked for me.

    Spybot ads CJ’s servers to the windows hosts file so anyone clicking your CJ links get looped back to localhost.

  21. PPC & Affiliate Marketing Blog on November 2nd, 2007 4:03 pm

    Earnosphere: Week Ending 3/11/07…

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  22. Guitar on November 8th, 2007 9:40 pm

    Cj and other affiliate networks, should change their way of linking.

  23. Internet Income News on November 23rd, 2007 7:59 pm

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