Affiliate Marketing Scams Exposed
The Palo Alto Networks® global threat intelligence team reported on a multi-year affiliate marketing spam campaigns designed to deceive individuals, scam, and profit off of people’s desire to change their lives.
The initial focus was on the "snake oil" products that were clearly fake such as weight loss and brain enhancement pills. The research looked at “pre-sell” deceptive celebrity endorsement pages. Celebrities like Gwen Stefani, Jennifer Lopez, Stephen Hawking, and others who "appreared" to be endorsing "snake oil" type products.
Affiliate marketers were partners in crime
Knowingly or not, some affiliate marketers were using unscrupulous means to promote bogus products. Affiliiate network vendors were found providing promotional material with fake celebrity endorsements to affiliates.
Also, affiliate marketers were found to be using fake endorsement landing pages as well as fake articles (farticles) to "pre-sell" shoppers and lead them to vendor sales pages.
Some of the vendor sales pages were covers for "re-bill" scams using free trial offers as bait to charge consumer credit cards. I wrote about these scams in my WA blog
https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/glenpalo/blog/ftc-lifts-lid-on-low-cost-trial-offer-scam
The team found the problem so pervasive, they engaged the GoDaddy abuse team. GoDaddy identified and shut down 15,000 subdomain accounts.
To read the entire global threat intelligence team report on affiliate marketing deceptive practices at
https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/takedowns-and-adventures-in-deceptive-affiliate-marketing/
Recent Comments
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These are problems we try to sniff out with our reviews. From writing them, I have learned that it is a good idea to read these reviews before buying something. I found you get a much better idea of what the product or concept is all about, and can make a much wiser judgment.
Glen,
Thanks for alerting us.
I just hate it when such scammers strike.
We better stick to that generous Nigerian billionaire who put you and I in his last will and testament as his sole beneficiaries.
Blessings!
It’s amazing what some people will do to make buck. I’ve run across some of these landing pages using celebrities to endorse their product or service.
A little research and it’s easy to see it’s a scam. Be safe out there. Enjoy the rest of your week.
Randy
Wow, Stephen Hawking promoting product from beyond the grave. I knew he was clever but...
Exactly right. The study was 2 years in the making. But still, anyone promoting a product using "his" endorsement should have taken it down.
We have a guy in the UK called Martin Lewis, 'Martin Lewis Money Saving Expert'. He's fabulous, a consumer champion with a very successful website, many TV appearances and his own TV show. I would go so far as to say he is a National Treasure.
He has categorically stated on every single platform that he does not endorse any products ever and that if you see him endorsing a product you can know that it is fake. Even so, his face and 'quotes' appear all over facebook and the internet endorsing many financial products including crypto-currencies.
Sadly there are always people who are gullible to these scams. Well done for highlighting some of them here on your blog.
Dr. Oz and Oprah have the same problem of people using their name and photos in fake endorsements.
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Never fails to amaze what some people will do. Thanks for alerting us Glen.
You are welcome, Mickey. What amazes me is the amount of garbage being promoted on Facebook.