YourAdTracker.com Goes All Pro
YourAdTracker.com is an ad tracking and short URL membership site that we’ve been running for a few years now. The site has grown to several thousand members and we’re proud of the service we provide.
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
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June 22nd, 2008 at 4:16 am
Brian,
Isn’t it always the few that ruin it for the rest. But I think you have done the right thing. What a task you had going through each account individually – wow. I am sure that the rest of your subscribers will understand. Glad my account survived though.
Lisa
June 22nd, 2008 at 8:52 am
Hi Lisa, It was a big task and we’re getting support questions and comments by the handful but most of our members are being very understanding. I do feel bad that some got caught up in the mess and lost their accounts. I tried hard to look at each account individually before deleting them but I’m sure many wanted to keep their accounts active.
One problem that I forgot to mention was that the database was so corrupt we couldn’t even send email to our members. Ideally I would have sent a request asking members to log into their account and correct any problems but that wasn’t an option.
The clean up seems to have worked. The email I sent yesterday only returned about a dozen bounces and they were 550s which are mailbox unavailable or no such user.
I do feel much better that our service will be far less likely used by spammers and phishers, not to mention those that want to conceal trojans or viruses using a tracking link.
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:27 am
Hi Brian,
I have been using AdTracker Free service for a few months now and have been logging in numerous times.
With it going PRO and paid service (without informing earlier), I could not logged in to my accounts esp today)
With the explanation above, even if I paid the $3.95 per month now, could it retrieve all datas on my accounts ?
Please advice.
Thank you
Lena Khalid
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:48 am
Thanks for taking the time to comment Lena. I apologize for the trouble. I am very aware of what it’s like to have all of your tracking links disappear. In fact, that’s why I originally started the service.
I wish I had an answer for you but those trackers are lost. Like I said in the post I can’t offer individual reasons for the deletion because there was no way to record what was wrong with each account. As it was it took a day and a half which is now well into the third day. I wish I could have informed everyone but to be honest the only other option was to be shut down completely. I was running on a very tight schedule. I was unable to send email and I did consider something like posting a message on the front page to warn everyone of the cleanup but there simply wasn’t time and few would have seen it within those few hours.
I do apologize and wish there was something I could do. It’s truly unfortunate, like Lisa said, that a few can ruin it for the rest. Those sending the phishing emails were gaining illegal access to people’s bank accounts and we were being contacted, to put it mildly, by several large banks.
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