Some of you might remember this post announcing Brutally Honest's relationship with Infolinks.
I received the following from a Jamie M. a couple of days ago:
Dear Rick,
We have detected fraudulent activities in your Infolinks Publisher account and your account has been permanently suspended.
We ask that you please remove the Infolinks code from your website at your earliest convience.
We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.
Jamie M.
Account Executive
I attempted to find out more since I categorically deny engaging in any fraudulent activities, being completely surprised by the allegations made and received the following in reply early Thursday morning:
Dear Rick,
Thanks for getting back to me.
While checking your site, our QA team found that some of the clicks that were made on your account were not deemed legitimate by our system, meaning that they were probably not made by legitimate viewers. Our agreements with our advertisers do not enable these clicks to be counted and paid for. For obvious security reasons, we cannot disclose our fraud criteria or our fraud detection tools, however as a legitimate company who pays each month thousands of publishers, if we deem an account as fraudulent it is done after careful consideration.
Jamie M.
Account Executive
I responded Thursday evening with the following and have heard nothing since:
Jamie,
What about any outstanding balances that I had on my account (I can no longer sign in to see it... which is just fabulous)...
You have until COB (5 PM EST) tomorrow (Friday the 16th) to give me the decency of answering my questions...
Or I'll publish a post and pass it along to as many of my uber blogger friends as possible, many of whom have linked to me before...
Your call sir...
I'm looking for some integrity here...
As God is my witness, I've not in any way attempted to defraud your company... not a single time...
I'm no longer sure that the reverse isn't true...
Infolinks owes me money and I'd like to believe they'll pay me any outstanding balances but I've not heard back from them, I can't log in to see what that the balance of my account might've been and my last contact with the company was Thursday morning.
My advice to any and all out there is to be aware and to act accordingly.
Crossposted at Brutally Honest.
UPDATE: Earlier today, I received the following:
Dear Rick,
My name is Avigail and I'm the Customer Satisfaction Manager here at Infolinks.
First, I'd like to stress that here at Infolinks, we take great pride in the relationships we build with our publishers and I'm sorry to hear that ours has gone sour. I'd like to get back on track and would appreciate the opportunity to rectify the situation.
The truth is, we did see fraudulent activity on your account, there is no denying that, but in certain cases the fraudulent clicks are not at the direct fault of the publisher. If this is the case, please accept our apology.
In the meantime, I have reopened your account and we will pay you your outstanding balance. I hope this is a step in the right direction and would be grateful if you could update your readers.
Sincerely,
Avigail Nir
Customer Satisfaction Manager
T 212.201.7481
F 212.419.0975
W www.infolinks.com
Consider yourselves updated.



Comments (4)
"We have detected fraudulen... (Below threshold)1. Posted by GarandFan | April 17, 2010 1:49 PM | Score: 6 (6 votes cast)
"We have detected fraudulent activities in your Infolinks Publisher account...."
Be nice of them to at least give you an idea of the 'fraudulent activities'. If they can 'detect' them, they can damned well explain where they're coming from.
1. Posted by GarandFan | April 17, 2010 1:49 PM |
Score: 6 (6 votes cast)
Posted on April 17, 2010 13:49
2. Posted by McGehee | April 17, 2010 2:25 PM | Score: 6 (6 votes cast)
After my run-in with Google over AdSense, I would stay as far away as possible from any pay-per-click outfit. The business model makes trust of any kind absolutely impossible, and the sooner that model dies off the better.
2. Posted by McGehee | April 17, 2010 2:25 PM |
Score: 6 (6 votes cast)
Posted on April 17, 2010 14:25
3. Posted by bobdog | April 17, 2010 3:52 PM | Score: 5 (5 votes cast)
Rick, please be considerate enough to wait until I collect my valuable Walmart Gift Card Prize. I won and want to claim my certificate number 33AF3T.
I want to use it to buy some sun glasses so I protect my eyes when I visit Wizbang.
3. Posted by bobdog | April 17, 2010 3:52 PM |
Score: 5 (5 votes cast)
Posted on April 17, 2010 15:52
4. Posted by yumyumfoodrecipes.com | May 24, 2011 9:28 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
I have infolinks ads for 2 weeks now. Just today, the ads aren't appearing any more. What's wrong?
4. Posted by yumyumfoodrecipes.com | May 24, 2011 9:28 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on May 24, 2011 21:28