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Oooh, two posts in one day. I wonder if I can go for three. Ah well. Not many people read this thing anyway. ^_^ So, here’s the rant. While going through my list of websites I like to check, I happened across this post: http://www.bleedingsnort.com/forum/viewtopic.php?forum=11&showtopic=968. In short, the original poster wanted their domains removed from the blackhole list.

For posterity, I’m posting the entire topic thus far here from http://www.bleedingsnort.com/forum/viewtopic.php?forum=11&showtopic=968.

Remove clickbank.net/com from blacklist
clickbank
Forum Newbie
Registered: 05/12/05
Posts: 2
Thursday, May 12 2005 @ 05:23 PM EST
Please take *.clickbank.com and *.clickbank.net off your blacklists. ClickBank is an e-book retailer that has nothing to do with spyware or malware. It is possible that these domains ended up on your list because Symantec identified a denial of service virus that was pointing traffic at our domain names.
jonkman
Forum Admin
Registered: 10/03/04
Posts: 335
Thursday, May 12 2005 @ 10:38 PM EST
Thanks for contacting us. We absolutely intend to follow a fair and due process if you feel you’re listed incorrectly.
v
David did some quick research on what others classify your domain as, my own googling an such confirms his. Here are his findings:
——
eTrust states clickbank only has a tracking cookie.
Symantec (http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/adware.clickbank.html) states that clickbank ” Continuously displays a fake Windows error message and directs you to download software.” in order to download an alleged spyware removal product.
webhelper4u lists them (http://www.webhelper4u.com/nontransponders/trekdata/Trekdatawhois.html) as part of the “spywarenuker” gang.
——
The ‘average’ finding there does put you into what we would consider spyware, or unwanted software. But we’re more than willing to listen to your side. If you can refute those listsing we’ll reconsider.
Something that would be key in getting off the list is showing us a legitimate product or service that you provide that is not spyware or tracking related. If you an do that we’re definitely more apt to reconsider. You mention that you’re an ebook retailer, but we can’t find on your site anything related to selling ebooks. It only talks about affiliates and commissions. That’s a bad sign.
Thanks again for contacting us, we do intend to treat you fairly.
Matt
Matt Jonkman Infotex / Bleedingsnort.com
clickbank
Forum Newbie
Registered: 05/12/05
Posts: 2
Friday, May 13 2005 @ 05:33 PM EST
ClickBank is a service provider for over 20,000 small publishers of popular e-books and software. These niche products are promoted by our network of well over 100,000 affiliates.
We are like a mixture between Amazon and Paypal. We’ve been handling payments and affiliates since 1997. In fact, if you do a Google search for “clickbank and amazon” or “clickbank and paypal”, it is easy to see the correlation.
We take great care to police our clients and our product quality. We have strict terms of service, and any violation of it typically results in immediate account termination. But, as you can see from our plea here, it only takes one or two bad clients to cause us huge amounts of grief, and damage to our brand name.
If one Amazon affiliate or Paypal merchant were to point a virus at amazon.com or paypal.com, they would terminate the client immediately, and 404 the traffic. We are no different. The difference is that no one would think of blacklisting amazon.com or paypal.com, and Symantec would never name a virus after them. Our brand name is simply less familiar than Amazon and Paypal.
Even so, ClickBank products are widespread and easy to find. Go to Google and search for “clickbank and ” any topic on which you can imagine finding information worth purchasing at a book store. Here’s four out of over 20,000 clients:
http://www.classical-guitar.net/
http://www.goodbyecitylife.com/garden-birds.htm
http://www.sitstayfetch.net/
http://matholymp.com/
If there is one key point here it is this:
Blacklisting our domains interferes with the livelihoods of tens of thousands of legitimate web site owners.
If you have an issue with a specific domain name that happens to reference ClickBank, we hope you will resolve the matter by blacklisting the problematic domain rather than us, the service provider. You can also send an abuse report to abuse@clickbank.com so that we can promptly terminate any offending accounts.

Now, in case you weren’t following along, clickbank is not who they say they are. Visiting their website myself shows absolutely no signs of ebooks. Instead I see affiliate listing and links to download software, which my guess is that the software vendors are not who they say they are either. In fact, clickbank, by its very name, says a link reserve, not ebooks, even if there were ebooks to be found.

Some research on google found some really interesting things. One was allegedly a former user of clickbank that was burned by them.

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/biz.marketplace.discussion/
browse_thread/thread/ecb8be14156c7bc6/1361
1c9eef2fa932?q=clickbank&rnum=10&hl=en#13611c9eef2fa932

I would never recommend anyone using Clickbank. Maybe if you strech it
and you sell wery high volume, well retained products that are only
downloadable (duhh, who has that?) The chargebacks will kill any profit possibility. They offer the
chargeback for a whole year (regardless if you(the vendor) want to do this it not)
PLus they charge you $15 fee (bankfee)….
A pure scam IMHO. Also I am still waiting for my paycheck since they
said your signed a contract (huhh) to get paid only when we get sales
from 3-4 different countries? WTF? I don’t remember ever signing or agreeing to anything
like that!!!??? One more unsrcupulous, loser dot com company(scamsters) - I wish they
go out of business tomorrow (geeez, maybe we must wait a few years
yet). Sorry I had to vent….

You can also find several websites that are “authorized clickbank affiliate storefronts.”

A bit more googling found http://www.clickbankebooks.com/. But perusing their directory of “ebooks” shows only software downloads, not ebooks. Software downloads you can’t trust. Software downloads linked from the same company that is alleged to spam and other nefarious activities. No clickbank, I don’t think you will win your crusade to remove that extremely large black mark from your name, not when you can’t be bothered to actually do something about it like going legitimate.