Major TOS Violation

Hey Everyone,

I have no problems with people creating free software, but I visited this forum from the program "Mimesis", which is a program where Xbox users can download custom maps, and I wasn't happy with what I saw.

One of the admin, has this message in his signature, that people should click the ads in order to support him.
http://www.projectmimesis.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=235

Not only does he have this message in his signature, but he posts pretty often that people should click the ads. ( use the search )
I understand that his project is costing him a lot of bandwidth, which off course cost money, but nevertheless he has a lot of mirrors, and this is clearly a TOS violation.

I haven't submitted this to Google ( yet ), because I wan't to know how everybody thinks about this, and what the right steps of action would be.

Thanks,

Adstracker.

 

I think it's only fair to contact him and ask him to fix it first...I did that once and the person was very apologetic and fixed the problem. He may not be intentionally trying to cheat.

 

How can not reading the TOS be unintentional?

 

Might just be stupid.

 

I agree, when you join Adsense, you must accept the TOS. Soo, you should know that this is strictly forbidden.

 

I'm sure stupidity is a bannable offense too

 

All of these sites blatantly ask/instruct users to click on their Google ads. I find this beyond-retarded:

http://frostlife.blogspot.com/

http://www.kadifeli.com/fedon/addrfile.htm

http://metrotri.com/document/45121/

http://www.jhonny.org/wap/

http://xbmodder.us/

http://tvmegasite.net/about.shtml

http://www.caboosecouncil.org/

http://nuked.gamingsource.net/

http://www.mr-corner.com/LittlePoll/

http://www.kadifeli.com/cgi-bin/regno.pl

http://www.learncheme.com/

http://www.gsmdrive.com/

http://blueprints.onnovanbraam.com/home/updatesall/

http://www.mariannegutierrez.co.uk/64/bottled-water

http://www.care2.com/c2c/group/creative_innovators


Do a search with CTRL+F on every page for the keyword "click" or "please"

Enjoy!

 

Damn, didn't know that there were so many websites that did this.

Do you think I should report the TOS violation?

 

Don't bother. Those guys won't last anyways... Google will SMOKE them before their first check.

 

Why not. It is not the responsibility of the advertisers to support his project. They are themselves trying to accomplish something with their ads. It is his fault if he did not read the TOS.

 

If you are a member of the forum, it doesn't hurt to mention it first. I think few people read the entire TOS, even though they click that they did.

I might have had one client that has read my web design contract, even though I push pretty hard that they really should read it in case they have questions about copyrights for information or images I add to their site. People are pretty lazy that way.

 

who wouldn't know that this is against TOS? you don't see them clicking their own ads, do you? and why is that - cos they know they'd get booted for click fraud. if you're aware of one, you most likely are aware of the other

 

Oke, I will warn them that they better don't that because the chance exists that Google bans them.

Thanks for the info, and if I have news, I will post it here.

 

lo.. how can you spotted all those websites?? are you somehow involved with the group?

 

I wonder if this guy is just acting unaware of what he is doing..

How do you go about reporting people like this?

http://obesity.alistabout.info/healt.html

 

Try running a google search on phrases that are likely to be used, You'll find a ton of them

 

Try this: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p="p...Search&ei=UTF-8&fr=moz2&x=wrt&meta=vl=lang_en

 

Better just contact him to fix it, why kill someone's livelihood

 

Let me tell you:

go to www.google.com

Do a search for "please click on the google ads" and "please click on the ads"

You will get 11000+ hits

And, no, I am certainly not involved. Thank you very much.

 

how the hell did he cheat the system and make ads by google etc same color.