Sunday, November 29, 2009

IS ENTRECARD INJECTING CPC ADS INTO OUR INBOX?

Early this year, in March 9, 2009 to be specific, I posted a blog entitled "Entrecard, Hacked?" In that post, I exposed the attempt by someone who injected a CPC ad into our inboxes.  I discovered the ad  when, in the course of making my daily drops, I clicked on the EC card and the landing page led me to a site which happens to be a cpc ad on Social Sparks. I raised the impropriety of the matter with Entrecard and Social Sparks, both of whom denied any knowledge of the matter. Social Sparks immediately promised to ban whoever was behind it while Entrecard apparently pulled the plug on it. I never saw the ad again in my inbox.(Read my post on this!)


Today, it is happenning again...and this time, it appears it is with the blessing of the Entrecard Administration if not done by themselves. For the past two days, an EC card which uses an image of a sexy girl, has been appearing on my drop inbox several times in one day ( 2 times so far on November 28 and 4 times on November 27). The landing page of this EC card goes to "Blog Production:Software" which is clearly a network marketing site and has a lot of cpc and cpa ads on it. I checked the site out on Entrecard and it does not exist. That is probably the reason why the site does not display an EC widget.

The most disturbing thing is the ad can appear more than once in your drops inbox. Legitimate members of Entrecard can drop only once on any EC member's site. So apparently, this can only be done by EC Administrators or with their blessings.

This is my inbox on November 28: (Notice the ad appearing twice)


This is part of my Inbox for November 27:(notice the ad appearing 3 times)  It appeared again on the next page of my November 27 inbox for a total of 4 appearances in one single day.


The suspicious EC card leads to this landing page which is a network marketing site:

There are network marketeers who are legitimate members of Entrecard. There is nothing wrong with that. They drop on your sites and we reciprocate the drops they make. But for a non-member's link to appear on your inbox, and more than once at that.....something is terribly wrong. If this link is a cpc (cost per click) ad, then whoever placed the link must be making loads of money from the clicks made by unsuspecting EC members who merely wanted to reciprocate the drops made on them. If this is a cpa (cost per action) ad, then it is getting free advertising. And if any unsuspecting EC member happens to subscribe to any product or service in the landing page, then whoever placed that link will be making loads of money!

I recieved a lot of flak from some of my Entrecard friends when I defended Entrecard in the issue of sposored ads before. My contention then was Entrecard needs to earn revenue for the upkeep of their servers and other maintenance work and services. But to hoodwink its members by slipping cpc and cpa ads into the inboxes is totally unacceptable.

I am prepared to be banned by Entrecard because of this expose. Never the less, I am exhorting all Entrecarders to be vigilant against this scrupulous scheme and expose all Entrecards which are mere cpc ads!

For now don't click on this card when you see it on your inbox:
If you come across others like this, please let me know and send me the details so I can expose it here. Better still, expose them yourself by making a similar blog post like this. Help me expose this Entrecard scam. Email this post to every Entrecarder you know.  Spread the word around.





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14 comments:

  1. Eli @ Business SphereNovember 29, 2009

    This is a great post.

    That ad of "Blog Production:Software" has been appearing on my drop inbox for the last 3 days, the latest of which is today, which appeared for 3 times.

    I made a blog post on this also, after reading your brilliant post. In my post I gave a very good word about you and give a link to your wonderful site.

    ReplyDelete
  2. NessaNovember 29, 2009

    Thank you for the info. Definitely will NOT click on this ad.

    ReplyDelete
  3. sheilasultaniNovember 29, 2009

    This SUCKS! Why does EC admin insist on ruining Entrecard. I most definitely will not click on this and I will let others know about it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Joanne OlivieriNovember 30, 2009

    The sad part is if you use the ec toolbar, you don't see the ad before you click, the page just loads. I haven't seen this as yet but will keep an eye out for it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. cornymanNovember 30, 2009

    Thanks for this post!!

    I wrote a blog post and revealed the secret behind this abusive system of this user (probably connected with two other users, he seems to have setup their websites, but one website is no more used since August 2008!)

    Revealing the secret behind the THREE identical ad pictures

    ReplyDelete
  6. DonnieNovember 30, 2009

    I stopped clicking this avatar about two days ago for the very same reasons. Also, if I click on any site and it's an automatic 'redirect', I do not return.

    ReplyDelete
  7. ShaineNovember 30, 2009

    Thanks for the great info. I noticed that too in my inbox and I drop on it almost everyday.

    ReplyDelete
  8. UnknownNovember 30, 2009

    Just a thought - but on the off chance that the Admin at EC do take heed perhaps all of us who see this happening should report it fiercely and often.

    It's also annoying that there are adverts appearing in our widgets to which we have little choice in. I always say good luck to those who climb by hard work and toil but there are far too many purchasing their way to the top. Not only are people doing this with these extra ads but also some purchase their way above everyone else in the queue ....

    Are people's blogs so very bad that they feel that the only way they can get anywhere is to buy their positions? Come on folks - for goodness sake lets have more hard work - decent amounts of drops and interesting blog posts!!!!

    Thank you once again for pointing this one out ...... it comes to something when we have to police things ourselves, doesn't it?

    ReplyDelete
  9. redkathyNovember 30, 2009

    I was wondering what was going on with those showing up three times. There are two of them. I surely won't be clicking them. Thanks for the post!!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Blog TacticNovember 30, 2009

    A dirty trick by EC to get member to reciprocate to a site.

    ReplyDelete
  11. The Fitness DivaDecember 01, 2009

    Good sleuthing on your part, Richard! I was just wondering what was going on with this widget appearing multiple times in my inbox. It actually showed up back to back to back 3 times in a row, and I knew that there was something wrong with that -- and didn't click on any of them!
    I first thought that it was some spammer blogger too lazy to create more than one widget for their various sites, but you cleared it up. Won't be clicking on any of them anyway!

    ReplyDelete
  12. LinDecember 01, 2009

    I am getting sooooo done with EC! There are more than "empty" blogs on EC than ever before. It's getting to be a craphole of junk blogs that are solely in the dropping game for visitors to their lame sites. Thanks for posting this one.

    ReplyDelete
  13. KirhatDecember 01, 2009

    Nice expose. I was wondering about that myself over the weekend and was hoping to write something about this when I read your post.

    Good work!

    Seek No More

    ReplyDelete
  14. Jeff AspacioDecember 01, 2009

    Hmmm... Thanks for the heads up. There definitely is something fishy here.

    ReplyDelete

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