Our site has gone off line three times in the last four months from abuse. We were hacked twice, a couple of members used mass mailers and spam and then just two days ago we had several free accounts using our service as a mass phishing attempt for several large banks.

I’ve come to realize that the spammers and phishers always use multiple free accounts. As I was searching through thousands of free membership accounts trying to clean up the abusers I noticed that the vast majority of our free accounts were either abandoned or violating our terms of use policies. I quickly decided the best action to take to clean up our database and prevent would be spammers and scammers from abusing our service would be to go to an all paid membership.

I have spent a solid day and a half going over every single free membership one at a time. If any member was violating any of the following items they were probably deleted:

• Inactive accounts. If a member setup an account and never logged back in within thirty days they were deleted.
• Linking to IP addresses rather than web addresses.
• Fake names. We require real names. Made up names, handles and initials risk deletion.
• Fake or bouncing emails. Verified emails are required to maintain an account.
• Linking to graphics, files and content other than web pages. Linking to files or dead links create a huge load on our server.
• Using our tracking links for spamming, phishing attempts, porn, wares etc.
• Dead links. We upgraded the script a long time ago allowing members to edit their tracking links. It’s the member’s responsibility to keep the links clean and working. Dead links hurt our site and service.
• Zero hits to a bunch of trackers. Many people setup dozens of tracking links months or years ago and never received a single click.
• Trackers on trackers. This means they would use our tracking links to redirect to other tracking links. This includes tracking links from other sites as well. The only reason for all of those re-directs is an attempt to hide your identity.
• More than two accounts.

From this point on all new memberships will be ‘Pro’ (paid) only. No free memberships will be offered on YourAdTracker.com. We offer a quality service that’s worth every cent of the very small membership fee. By requiring every new member to pay via PayPal we can be reasonably sure it’s a legitimate person.

I would like to thank every member, both past and present, for allowing us to improve and grow as a membership site. If your account was deleted in the clean up I do apologize for the inconvenience. Unfortunately all data has been deleted and can not be recovered. Due to the large task of removing bad accounts I am unable to answer individual questions asking why they were deleted other than as discussed above.

Brian