It looks like they are taking this seriously… that is a good sign.
I don’t like the fact that we have to “report” spam to them, though. It’s good that they set this up, but I wonder how exactly they will use this tool. Will they ask the black hatter to remove only the pages that have been spotted, or will they ban him permanently from the program?
BTW Professor, your earlier (long) post was very good.
We can continue to aggressively pursue and report spammers and again we praise them when they make a positive move to reduce the problem. Let them believe that we consider the bad affiliates the problem and that we want to work with CPays, to get rid of this plague so that we can BOTH earn more money.
If we take that tact rather then declaring war on them and blacklisting them and trying to hurt their casinos then we may be able to guilt them into doing the right thing. If we dont then we will have no leverage at all and the blackhatters will win the war.
Ideally this would work… but I am more inclined to think that their bottom line needs to be affected before they will take any serious action.
Also, I don’t think I can ignore the other problems surrounding Cpays, which have nothing to do with black hatters. Even without the black hatters making them look bad, Cpays has done some things that shouldn’t be forgotten so quickly. They ripped off Ellen and Dean, they “accidentally” sent emails to people threatening to close their accounts, they “accidentally” retroactively lowered someone’s commission, and in general, the people that work there are pushy and rude when they communicate via email (e.g. to get you to promote their brands).
So, I think I am annoyed with Cpays for two reasons — one, because they have a long history of undesirable, shady behavior, and two, because they have been lenient with scrapers up until now.
Regarding the scenario where Cpays becomes a BH haven…. Do you think if there was a massive blacklisting by the white hats, that Cpays would be able to survive on BH traffic alone? We did this with 888, and they rather quickly decided that they should try to fix things with the white hats. Because of this, and because of the way Fortune, VPL, and RB reacted last summer to the massive blacklisting campaign, I believe that we do wield enormous power — more than any number of black hats.
Like it or not this will be an ongoing project for as long as there are profits to be made in marketing online gaming.
Hmm… 🙁
Well, maybe if we put a few of these guys out of business completely, the remaining companies will shape up and take this as seriously as we do? I do think we are “in charge” in a way…. In charge of where most of the traffic (and money) goes, at least.