888 has always been to me, the dark side of the online casino industry. Since I started out in this industry I found them most annoying. From spam in my inbox to black hat SEO techniques. They have always been the most prominent. They must have a LARGE affiliate support base as the numbers of these sites using these absolute devilish techniques have grown to phenomenal amounts. They have over a million pages out there that are advertising them, of which a very large percentage(Considering) are only advertising them.
I have always had my suspicions about them and the moment I saw this post I thought “JACKPOT!” I jumped in started to investigate this myself but every time I found a crap load of affiliate sites. I made a study fanning out the IP addresses and domains that they own, investigating every single one individually. This took a couple of days and no concrete proof. The harsh reality is however, there is a simple and easy way for them to actually hide if they are practicing these dark techniques. Add an affiliate tag. That means we are check mate to a certain extend! So I have never really seen a way for anyone to proof that they are indeed responsible for scraping, bowling or all that crap. The worst is that they know this. They will always blame it on some idiot affiliate, of which there are quite allot out there. When cruising the black hat forums, it always amazes me that these people can actually have friends. I view them as gun slingers in the wild west. They think they are hero’s but at the end of the day they are just murderers.
The only way for this to be stopped is if Casava acts immediately on proof provided. An affiliate that commits these crimes are nothing but criminal AND they knew exactly what the hell they are doing. They do not need to be asked to please avoid these strategies and then months down the line they are suddenly banned because they didn’t listen. That is BS. They do not need chances. They should get banned immediately and with NO payment! END OF STORY! If they set a good example less “affiliates” will take them for a ride.
If this was any other affiliate program they would have been kicked a long time ago. The only reason I still feel they need a chance to fix this is that I hardly ever recieve or see any complaints by players related to 888. Considdering their size this is remarkable.