My business partner lost 4k. I lost 2k. But either way, yes, I am certainly not in favor of google's business practices. As far as I see it, Baron's involvement in this is thus: 1) He runs a site that is very good at promoting proxies 2) Anyone who goes to proxy.org can get a full list of these proxies. 3) Other people want their proxies promoted, but with 1000 new proxies being started a week, its hard to get the kind of exposure you would want. 4) Google has a long history of banning proxy accounts for invalid clicks that were not the fault of the webmaster running the site 5) Google recently published an article about clickbots. In that article they published the names a few of the older, less refined, easier to track clicking bots 6) Soon, proxies on the proxy.org list began getting notices en-masse that they had engaged in click fraud. Now, lets try something here. Lets play the "what is more reasonable" game. Is it more reasonable that baron, by our estimates of how many and type of ads running on his site, estimated therefore to be making in excess of $10k / month, would go out of his way to inflate a traffic statistic that nobody except the site owner can verify in the first place (namely, the number of uniques sent to each domain by his site), for the purpose of encouraging people to advertise with him, when eventually this would eventually be found out and his advertisers would lose faith in his business. Is *that* more likely? Or is it more likely that someone in the proxy industry put two and two together, they have a huge list of all their competitors at proxy.org. Since most of these proxy operators are just leeching off proxy.org without promoting their sites from any other venue, you've also got right in front of you the source of all their revenue. So would it be reasonable to conclude, that someone took one of these names of the clickbots that google has told them they can easily detect, and pointed it against the list of sites at proxy.org, for the purpose of spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt into the proxy industry, leaving the incredibly valuable proxy.org traffic and adsense proxy revenue all to themselves? I think the second scenario seems a lot more plausible. As to me, I've given up on adsense. I will no longer make my business rely on them as a source of revenue. They are too inconsistant in their performance, and too unreliable in their enforcement of their policies. My CPM don't pay as much as google does, but they pay close to the same rates every day, and though many of them don't pay on time, I've yet to have one not pay me at all. Luckily for me, I get enough traffic to my proxies and run an efficient enough operation that my business can survive off CPM ads. So the person trying to put me out of business in October by click bombing me, has failed miserably. I have bigger things to worry about in my business than who is clicking on my ads, and luckily, my CPM advertisers don't make me monitor that.
I stand corrected on your involvement with proxy.org. Please accept my apologies for placing you in an unfitting position.
From wikipedia: In Internet terminology, a troll is someone who intentionally posts derogatory or otherwise inflammatory messages about sensitive topics in an established online community such as an online discussion forum to bait users into responding You have done that repeatedly on the proxy.org forums, which is why you are banned there. You have done it here as well, but have so far avoided being banned by operating under the false premise of trying to be helpful to the community. There certainly is something wrong, but I submit that it is not directly related to any activities being performed by proxy.org. If you advertised in a phone book, and some idiot decided to look through the phone book for the section you advertised in, and target all the businesses in that section to burn their business to the ground, clearly that is a problem for everyone. Clearly it is something everyone should be concerned about. And yes, it is even a problem for the phone book because it means people will be scared to list there anymore. But certainly you can't blame the phone book, they offered a service you asked for, they listed you where others would find out about your business. It just so turns out that one of the people using the phone book to find out about your business decided to burn it to the ground. But if nobody listed their businesses in the phone book, that nut job would have found out about your business from some other method and burned it down anyway.
I accept your apology. Hopefully we can move forward from this point in a more productive manner. MCI Communications Services, Inc. d/b/a Verizon Business UUNET63 (NET-63-64-0-0-1) Search results for: ! NET-63-64-0-0-1 OrgName: MCI Communications Services, Inc. d/b/a Verizon Business OrgID: MCICS Address: 22001 Loudoun County Pkwy City: Ashburn StateProv: VA PostalCode: 20147 Country: US NetRange: 63.64.0.0 - 63.127.255.255 CIDR: 63.64.0.0/10 NetName: UUNET63 NetHandle: NET-63-64-0-0-1 Parent: NET-63-0-0-0-0 NetType: Direct Allocation NameServer: AUTH03.NS.UU.NET NameServer: AUTH00.NS.UU.NET Comment: ADDRESSES WITHIN THIS BLOCK ARE NON-PORTABLE RegDate: 1999-01-22 Updated: 2006-12-14 RTechHandle: OA12-ARIN RTechName: UUnet Technologies, Inc., Technologies RTechPhone: +1-800-900-0241 RTechEmail: OrgAbuseHandle: ABUSE3-ARIN OrgAbuseName: abuse OrgAbusePhone: +1-800-900-0241 OrgAbuseEmail: OrgNOCHandle: OA12-ARIN OrgNOCName: UUnet Technologies, Inc., Technologies OrgNOCPhone: +1-800-900-0241 OrgNOCEmail: OrgTechHandle: SWIPP-ARIN OrgTechName: swipper OrgTechPhone: +1-800-900-0241 OrgTechEmail: # ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2007-04-16 19:10 # Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN's WHOIS database. From my investigating similar ip addresses in the past, I would say this is most likely an ip address assigned to a school in the loudon county school district in loudon county, virginia. I used to live near there incidentally, so I get a personal kick out of the fact that my proxies are so popular in that region. Based on how much traffic I see from there, I suspect they filter things a lot in that region, but at the same time, use filters that are not very good at filtering proxy sites. I wouldn't consider that ip address suspicious.
Well said. I think this horse has been beaten quite enough. There are some things that you say that I agree with and there are some things that I don't... but such is life... I don't hold any ill will toward you or anyone else in this thread. Everyone has been doing their best to do what they think is right... even though we all have jabbed each other in occasion I hope that everyone can walk away and at the end of the day have an improved and more profitable tomorrow.
I havent yet heard from adsense, but I personally feel that proxy.org may have been an easy resource for someone out to get proxy owners but it was them alone... I had seen quite alot of suspicios activity on my account which I had even reported to google... you can check out my complete post at http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=2839449&postcount=44 Cheers!!
you know what makes me laugh here? you are all providing proxies to make money out of school children to bypass the schools web filters on porn and other stuff, you all hide your details and then bitch about someone not telling you there name address phone number, open their logs, and make money outta greedy people who think providing kids with proxies to bypass porn filtered pc's. and you bitch about the morals of information you allow 1 child to access porn from your proxy and you are (by your own words) responsable for trafficing porn to a minor. if i was you, i would put the lid back on the can of worms. proxy.com might get a fine for what they did. you can get 35 years for trafficing porn to minors. wanna show us your logs? when you call the pot black, better make sure you are whiter than white
To be honest, that's a good point. I'm out of the proxy business for everything from Proxy.org to what you just mentioned.
The TOS on most proxies specifies that this is not allowed. If they do browse that stuff, it's at their own risk, and they could be banned from the proxies. So we are not responsible for their actions.
eat me, he is saying that you are responsable for allowing your users to use your server for illgal things, thats what it boils down to, and you allow school kids to access your proxy sites for one thing and one thing only, to bypass the school filters, if that means accessing porn then you provided the means for the child to bypass the schools filters, you get 35 years for trafficing porn to a minor. the same if you allowed your 9 year old son to put a porn movie in the VCR at home, you dont think for one second a court is not going to take the child from you because you was not responsable do you? shit you're greener than green, not whiter than white.
you said that proxy.org is responsable for people commiting a crime on his server, are you so sure you dont allow children to access porn from your server? if i am not mistaken, it dont matter what you say it is marketed for, kids can access porn from it. they know it, the school know it, and if a school has blocked myspace, dont you think you are taking the schools policy into your own hands? for what? greed, you make money from the kids, thats all that matters to you. nothing more.
Ethics and the law are two different things that very often do not go together. This is another discussion. Why not start a thread for it ?
why dont you follow what we are talking about, we are talking about responsibility of proxy site owners being responsible for the use of their sites and servers, like froger said, proxy.org is responsible, i am pointing out that he is too, and that he can face jail time if he starts something that he has not thought through fully.
kids are going to access what ever they want , when they want. if they want to see something. no one can really stop it. we dont encourage any porn for children (well i dont) i market my proxies for myspace , youtube , etc. a lot of things that are meant for good use can also be turned the other way around. so dont use that card.
Amen to that! besides.. this generation is way smart and faster than us. Don't you watch the news? there are girls pregnant under 10 years old.. and I don't think they learned about having sex on school or at home... porn to children... that is a stupid argument. when i was a kid i managed myselv to get porn magazines and videos... don't you think that the internet already has made that easier for everyone? give me a break!
Your going to have to. If you don't you still don't comply with Google's request. From what you'd make with AdSense, compared to without is a BIG difference.
A few days ago, when I visit their homepage, my browser status bar show me: connecting to proxy.org waiting for proxy.org connecting to proxy.org waiting for proxy.org connecting to proxy.org waiting for proxy.org ..................... Ceaseless!