Request for informtion: PROXY.ORG

There is nothing you can do, I suggest you read through this thread in its entirety, before you do anything.

It seems someone, rather than working on a method to increase his own earnings, has created a bot that targets competing proxies, this bot click bombs it's target and the owner of that proxy ends up getting his Adsense account taken away.

Proxy.org is the number one proxy topsite, and the person behind this bot is using Proxy.org's listings as targets, sponsored or otherwise. Proxy.org's listings are serving as a menu of sorts for this bot to feast upon.

As far as your lawsuit goes, sorry dude, you have no ground whatsoever, when you signed up for your Adsense account you handed over all rights to said account, so if Google banned you, you consented to the possibility when you signed up.

Baron (the owner of Proxy.org) is doing more than Google is to try and stop this and track this person down.

 

What an idiot, I hope you did not give it to him ?

 

I could've kept it and gone into legal trouble but the domain was worthless anyway, so I just gave it away.

 

I just tried to go to Proxify.com and I'm blocked from there. I can't go to proxy.org anymore and strangely I can no longer go to proxify.com either which Baron also owns. I've never done anything to the baron, in fact I have paid for many ads on his site so why is it I'm blocked from all the sites he owns? Does anyone know of any other sites he owns? I'd be interested to see if I can get to them either..

 

While the first statement is true, in no way can Baron guarantee any sort of security with your Adsense account. I think this is ridiculous, good luck with your case but without the aid of Google in validating your claims you have very little to go on. Google are very secretive about the the whole adsense system, have you externally verified that indeed the traffic is fake. Got the proof to back that up?

 

Well, I will be suing him. That is a fact.

Not only did he block me from his site, but when I filed a PayPal complaint he removed the ads that were paid and then resold my pending ads ALL without even offering a refund.

There is something very fishy going on there and I think that he is behind the whole scheme.

I guess he will have an chance to present his defense in court.

Funny thing is that Google is VERY willing to help. They have all of the "authority" data and have no problem sharing. Funny how subpoenas work...

just off the top of my head I would say that both sites are very likely hosted on the same server. If you are blocked at the server level then you would be blocked from both sites.

I go back to my earlier statement: "If he has nothing to hide then why is he hiding?"

If I were you, or anyone with ads running on there and I valued my Adsense account and/or my money I would pull those ads and send an email to Google post haste.

Like I said, we will let the court sort this out. I certainly WILL be filing action on Monday.

The owner of proxy.org has ignored every opportunity to provide logs and information that would help to sort this out. When Google click fraud was doing the initial investigation I asked him for info that would clear this up and he refused. That is a pretty clear sign to me that he is hiding something.

Withholding info, blocking IPs of people that are having problems and canceling ads when you complain just does not scream "I am innocent" in the eyes of most people.

 

You will be laughed out of court.

 

I know it's frustrating, but I agree.

They will not take you seriously.

 

Well, I changed IPs and got back into proxy.org and made an offering to Baron to work together. I guess we will see how that works.

If you guys were privy to the same info from Google that I am you would have a very different opinion.

 

Hate to say it but you don't stand a chance. Id take a step back, relax, and really think things through before you file a lawsuit that will be dismissed as frivolous.

 

By all means share; Shouldn't we, as proxy owners, stick together?

 

Baron runs a private business and conducts it as he see's fit. I know he is a big advocate of privacy, after all that is his business, so why on earth do you think he's going to hand over server logs to some random schmoe? Baron has every right to determine who's allowed on his website, I know he'll laugh at your ridiculous demands and I hope the courts do too.

Why dont you target the actual company causing the problem here? Google. Why, if they can track down all these "invalid clicks" dont they simply discard them? Google are the ones playing dirty here but they know they are untouchable, they really should start working with the publishers instead of just pandering to advertisers.

P.S. There is an "edit" button, it keeps the boards alot cleaner than multiple postings from the same person.

 

Now, exactly what do you know about that ? Care to share your legal expertise on the matter ?

 

I will be so happy when football season opens so all of these arm-chair-lawyers can go back to being arm-chair-quarterbacks.

Privacy is one this and I will be the first person to stand in defense of anyone who feels the need to protect their logs, but if you have information about a crime and you choose to withhold that information to further your financial interests that is called "facilitating fraud" and that is a felony in every state.

In my opinion is someone is using your site/store/building/name (whatever) to commit fraud and you are profiting from it and you do nothing to assist in their being brought to justice then your moral crime is far worse than that of the perpetrator.

Hiding behind "internet privacy" is a cowardly and collusive act.

 

Here is a blog post on the problems of facilitating fraud that eBay faced a while back.

The complete post and associated comments can be found here:
http://www.professorbainbridge.com/2006/01/ebays_business_.html

In my opinion the proxy.org situation, assuming that they were not an active party in the click fraud, is the same.

When making a decision to purchase the resources offered by proxy.org you are presented with the following text:

As in the eBay scenario one is led to believe that the "hits" in this case are legitimate. If the text on proxy.org said, "but over 90% of these hits are machine generated" the value of that resource would be proportionally diminished.

At some point internet website operators that rent their resources to others must assume responsibility for that resource. To hold the idea that website owners are not responsible for the actions of their visitors, especially when that site owner is selling those actions is not only unreasonable but unconscionable.

Courts have already determined that auction sites like eBay and Yahoo ARE to be held responsible for the actions of their clients. This is a rather extreme example, but suppose John Doe is running a free web hosting service and Jim Smith signs up. Mr. Smith decides to upload and publish a site intended to defraud people. Is Mr. Doe responsible for Mr. Smith's actions?

Internet law is a very gray area, but hopefully my actions in this matter will help draw some more clearly defined lines.

 

While conspiracies are fun, I would have to vote that Baron is not behind this traffic.

I'm another paying advertiser on proxy.org who had their adsense account frozen this week. Baron is now out my $500/mo for advertising. It wouldn't be a very wise way to run what appears to be a very profitable business. If he is behind the traffic, he's just killed off all of his highest paying customers.

I have sent a number of emails to google and received almost no decent feedback from them. I assume someone else is behind the traffic.

 

Did you happen to notice the posts that I made earlier on proxy.org, the ones offering to help people get in touch with Adsense and the ones that pointed out that Baron was aware of this problem weeks ago? Well, if you missed them you will not get to see them since Baron deleted them just about 1 hours ago.

This guy might not be as dirty as I think, but he certainly does not want his users to know that Google sees the problem as coming from him, he has known about the issue for quite some time and chose to keep his advertisers in the dark, and he does not want me to talk to any of his advertisers.

You sent him $500. Welcome to the club. I sent him $2050.00 and the bulk of the ads that I bought never ran. Do you think that he will be sending either of us a refund... not likely.

If I were you and was a proxy.org advertiser I would ask Baron at what point was he informed about the click fraud problem and I would also ask him why he fears me and the truth. Or I might just ask him why he keeps deleting my posts if he has nothing to hide.

Like I said, he might not be dirty, but I learned a long time ago that if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck... good money says you are looking at a duck.

I don't think that we are dealing with some great conspiracy. I think that we are dealing with one guy that has a clickbot and knows that he cannot use that bot on his own Adsense accounts. The solution would be to offer advertising and then send the bot clicks to the advertisers sites. That would artifically inflate the value of the ads and attract new advertisers.

I believe that this all worked great until Google changed something about the way it detects invalid clicks and/or his network got so large that it was impossible to stay under the radar. I tend to favor the idea that Google changed it detection methods after my discussion with them AND considering the fact that YPN does not detect the same invalid activity.

The bottom line here is that something fishy is going on at proxy.org that he does not want to be made public. He wants to continue to rake in ad revenue at the expense of proxy site owners. If that in and of itself is not enough to get your blood boiling then you deserve whatever comes your way. As long as Baron says,

the sheep will continue to follow and he will continue to take your money without regard for the consequences.

I know that some of you think I am off-track with this, but I told you that Google was going to be sending out warnings and guess what: THEY DID. IF that single incident does not lend credence to what I am telling you then I can't help.

Mark my words. There will be more come form this yet.

 

wow good luck with your lawsuit and keep us posted lol

 

Not researching for an hour but I clicked the link and they sell ads by the month, no guarantees. Good luck with "law enforcement".

 

Suing is easy, it's winning the suit as well as the guaranteed countersuit that might be an issue.