I'd imagine there are individuals in the computer press and even mainstream press who'd like to be made aware of these events. Some of it (like taking back money that has been paid out and then fining individuals), if it is all true, seems like very borderline behaviour. I didn't see anything in the agreement that gave them the right to recall prior payments; it all seems very questionable
Funny! I got a extra 500 visitor yesterday http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=2435239&postcount=867 You're right
Man...my PHPbb bulletin board is getting slammed with spam from bots...I bet Adwords is sending bot traffic to make me think I'm getting my money's worth. I need to sue them!! Anyone got Google's address handy?
I had a very successful proxy and had to sell it on DP due to an Adsense ban. I paid for a featured link on proxy.org - perhaps this is why I was banned. I lost ads on a network of sites.
Well there you have it. I suggest that you not take it lying down and file a complaint with your payment processor.
If you paid with PayPal, just file a dispute on the transaction and escalate it to a claim. Seller will not be able to respond (PayPal glitch), therefor it will force refund in 14 days. Perhaps that is why he took PayPal off the payment options list
Here is Baron's (proxy.org owner) response to the controversy surrounding the bots... http://proxy.org/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1176953023
Well he is full of crap... if the recent fines and banning from Google are not evidence enough then I can´t come up with anything that will help you.
I am not disagreeing with anyone, I am just posting his reply to the current discussion. I was banned from Adsense shortly after my web proxy was advertised on his site, perhaps it was because of the bots.
The sin in this dance is that Baron (Justin Schletcher) continues to take money from you and other webmasters when he knows that the traffic from his site is tainted. He can accuse me of unfounded accusations all day and in the end there are hundreds if not thousands of webmasters that have received warnings from Google and had thousands of dollars deducted from their accounts. Is that not proof enough? I am flattered that many think that I could organize a scheme that includes Google terminating and fining webmasters, but the truth is that I exposed a problem with proxy.org and Justin is the only person to continue to profit from the blood of your losses. You can love me or hate me, but when the dust settles I know that I am right and that Justin Schletcher is a scab on the ass of humanity.
As far as I am aware... yes. I would steer clear of proxy.org and of using adsense on proxy sites that receive anything other than pure SE traffic.