Affiliate Fraud
Ah, we feel this one at Shmoop. We've had "partners." Nice, well-dressed people. They get paid a commission to sell a premium month o' Shmooop. But they find all kinds of ways to defraud us (and others). Dating sites for example, often have to pay for clicks, and that affiliate site can hire a small army of Somalian clickers to fake click to the site. They charge the dating site full affiliate fees, and the site gets little for their dough.
Fraud happens on many fronts. Stolen data, cloning/stealing content...yeah, we feel this one big time, having closely spelled domains (gooogle or schmoop). All felt. And then, since affiliates often know a lot about customers, they can trick them into downloading a virus onto their hard drives, or stuffing their cookies with malware. So affiliates can be good, and they can be oh so bad.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What is an Affiliated Person or...3 Views
finance a la shmoop - What is an affiliated person or affiliated investor
ah Phil he eight ed.. affiliated meaning with or connected to or legally
conjoined at the hip that's affiliated well why does the concept even matter or
exists in finance land well because too many times in the dark [Ancient ornament appears]
days before the SEC was invented family members seemed to always get spectacular
breaks in knowing just when to buy stock right before the big merger happened
well the SEC took notice and basically declared that affiliated people like
family members or people living under the same roof or connected in various
and sundry other you know close means well all of them would be treated more [The Daily Shmoop newspaper page]
or less as the same person as far as the law was concerned they created this
notion of an affiliate so that Joe Sixpack would have at least as fair a [Joe Sixpack appears]
chance to get positive investment returns at least as close as you know
the the close-knit cousin living in the guest home of the CEO of whatever
dot-com only back then it was just called whatever simply said if you're an
affiliate of an insider ie someone who can't just buy and sell shares of a
given company whenever they want because they have inside knowledge then you the
affiliate are legally treated as if you yourself are the insider that's an [Insider and affiliate side by side]
affiliate so don't let what happen to Phil happen to you [Phil standing behind bars]