Hacker, Researcher and Author.

Is Infolinks A Fraud? - Decide It For Yourself

Well, This post is a bit off the topic, but I really wanted to share my experience with so called intext advertising company called infolinks. Infolinks claims to be one of the best intext advertising companies and also promises to share the highest revenue possible then it's competitors, The following impressed me and I quickly signed up for a publisher account back 1.5 years back.
During first few months I enjoyed good amount of revenue and CPM with infolinks, but after few months the CPM showed a significant amount of drop, I wrote an email to infolinks related to this issue, Here is what they replied:



Hi Rafay,

Thanks for writing in!

What you are experiencing now is a common fluctuation which is typical for a website's organic traffic. It is quite natural for eCPMs to fluctuate; it will go down but just as quickly it will go back up, as you are starting to see already.

Unlike other methods of advertising, the in-text advertising market is relatively new and as such, is still subject to instability. The In-text advertising market is built on supply and demand and advertisers (which are the 'customers' buying the words on your website) are setting their budgets after various considerations.

Moving forward, I always recommend that Infolinks publishers choose double-underlined links. Double-underlined links are less intrusive (since your readers won’t confuse them with regular hyperlinks.) We find that Publishers who choose double-underlined links earn more money because it helps ensure that your website receives the best quality ads that we have to offer.

To switch from dotted to double underlined links, please login to your Infolinks Account and go to the “Integration Guide” and change your status to “Double Underline”. Don’t forget to save your newly changed settings. I highly recommend making this switch today!

I hope that you have found this information to be helpful! Please let me know if you require additional assistance or have any other questions.

Have a lovely day.

Jamie M.
Senior Account Executive

E support@infolinks.com
W www.infolinks.com
After two to three days the revenue of infolinks shooted up once again and after a month or so it dropped again. I wrote an email once again got a same reply.


Important Points From the above Email
  • What you are experiencing now is a common fluctuation which is typical for a website's organic traffic - However my organic traffic kept increasing while the CPM was Dropping.
  • I always recommend that Infolinks publishers choose double-underlined links. Double-underlined links are less intrusive (since your readers won’t confuse them with regular hyperlinks). -  Decide it for yourself, will a double underline will increase your CTR or single line. Total Misguidance.

Account Suspension


As the CPM fluctuations were going off and on, One day infolinks emailed me the following:
Dear Rafay,

At this time we have temporarily blocked your Infolinks account. We found that you have added the Infolinks code to pages that violate our TOS. We ask that you please remove the Infolinks code from the following pages. Once you have done so, please let us know and we will reactivate your account.

http://rafayhackingarticles.blogspot.com/2009/07/how-to-hack-facebook-account.html

http://rafayhackingarticles.blogspot.com/2010/01/4-ways-on-how-to-hack-facebook-password.html

http://rafayhackingarticles.blogspot.com/2010/07/free-microsoft-office-2010-product-key.html

http://rafayhackingarticles.blogspot.com/2010/06/adobe-photoshop-cs5-serial-number.html

http://rafayhackingarticles.blogspot.com/2010/07/free-microsoft-office-2007-product-key.html

http://rafayhackingarticles.blogspot.com/2009/03/hack-hotmail.html
http://rafayhackingarticles.blogspot.com/2010/01/remote-password-hacking-software_07.html

http://rafayhackingarticles.blogspot.com/2010/04/facebook-password-hacker-and-cracker.html

http://rafayhackingarticles.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-to-hack-gmail.html

Thank you for your cooperation and have a lovely day.

Jamie M.
Account Executive

E support@infolinks.com
www.infolinks.com

So I searched on Google for the keyword "Infolinks TOS" and found none, But anyways I used infolinks OFF tag to stop infolinks from displaying on these particular pages. After a week or so infolinks blocked again and asked me to remove some URLS, As I didn't wanted to loose the revenue I generated from Infolinks, I removed the URLS they asked.

It was september 20rd when it had been more than 2 months, Since they didn't made the payment, So I wrote an email and never got a reply, On 23rd December I received an email from infolinks:

Dear Rafay,


Thank you for writing back.


As noted previously, our analysts have deemed your account activity to be illegitimate and therefore instructed us to close it according to our terms of service.


We ask that you please remove the Infolinks codes from your site(s) if you have not done so already.


We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.


Sincerely,


 Jamie M.
 Account Executive\


support@infolinks.com
www.infolinks.com

I replied with the following:

Thanks for the email, Kindly tell me what kind of Illegitimate activities, I have not done any kind of fraud with you, I need explanations, Plus you havent made my payment


Warm Regards,
Rafay Baloch

They replied again after a 4 days or so:

Dear Rafay,


Thank you again for your reply.As previously stated, your account cannot be reopened for reasons previously explained.We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.


Sincerely,
Jamie M.Account Executive

I was using infolinks for several other websites like http://techlotips.com, if they had problems with RHA, then why did they suspend all other websites too, The answer is very simple they didn't wanted to pay me, After writing several emails to them and not getting a proper reply, I decided to put the kibosh on it and move to kontera. Here are the keypoints to note from the above emails:

  • The moment I asked for the payment which was well above then 3000$, they suspended my account.
  • They never told me about the fraud I did with them.

Why you should Avoid Infolinks?

  • Infolinks Will decrease your adsense revenue
  • Your Bounce Rate will be inreased
  • Blog Load time increases, which is really fruitful for SEO.
Don't believe me, see what a Six Figure blogger has to say about infolinks:

http://techadvices.com/infolinks-kontera-statistics/
http://techadvices.com/infolinks-premium-publishers-cpm-down/


Another Infolinks Scam:
http://jimshep.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/the-infolinks-african-safari-scam/

If you are in a similar situation and have been screwed by infolinks, Kindly share with us. We will be happy to publish your story. I believe my story might have changed your mind, Kindly share this post with every one you know, So it might now happen to any one else.

Is infolinks a Fraud?, Decide it for yourself now.

37 comments:

  1. Yeah, infolinks really sucks...

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  2. bhai.. u r right i also hate them ..chitika is good option use it regularly..and try others ads like kontera..or cpalead one day a week

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  3. Assalamualikum rafay bhai , Thanks for all the efforts that you put in gifting us with the best security related tips, Thank you very much.

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  4. It's not a fraud at all! I've been earning from infolinks from past one year and it has been a major source of income for me besides adsense!

    ReplyDelete
  5. @All
    I am really happy to hear your feedback.

    @Zain
    Tell me once your earning reaches well above 1000$ a month with infolinks.

    ReplyDelete
  6. "Yeah, I don't know about them.

    My own questionable experience was over the summer when I entered a contest to win an African Safari. All I had to do was Like the Infolinks Facebook page and have had at least one payout with them.

    Anyway, I checked back a few days ago and it turns out the reason I never heard about a contest winner is they never announced one. They canceled the contest without telling anyone, deleted any mention of it on both their blog and Facebook page; just letting everyone assume they announced an actual winner.

    You can read more about what happened in my blog post about it: http://jimshep.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/the-infolinks-african-safari-scam/

    - Jim"

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thanks for commenting, I have added the url of your post to my post.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hey, this is Tammy from Infolinks and I need to join this conversation. First of all, please read this portion of our FAQ - http://www.infolinks.com/support/qualification/what-are-the-eligibility-criteria-for-my-site-to-qualify-as-an-infolinks-publi

    Our advertisers do not want to pay for ads, nor do we want to support ads appearing on pages promoting hacking people's Facebook's account, stealing software you didn't pay for and other questionable activity that you were promoting.

    Since January of this year we have repeatedly sent you warning about this questionable material and asked you to remove Infolinks script from these pages. I'm sorry you didn't heed the warnings, or else you could've made money legitimately with Infolinks like our other happy publishers.

    ReplyDelete
  9. @Tammy
    Thanks for the comment, Here is what I need to say for my defense.

    1. First of all if you thought that website my website was against your TOS, they you shouldn't had accepted me in the first place.

    2. Secondly, When you asked me to remove the code from questionable content, I did add the infolinks OFF tag, but I had no control over the Infolinks related tags and tag clouds.

    3. As mentioned above infolinks do not support ads appearing on Pages, I had been a publisher of infolinks for more well over than 2 years and you start to realize in january that the content is not legitimate, Plus if you wanted you could have blocked ads appearing on keywords which are questionable to you.

    4. As you have mentioned yourself that normally infolinks pays within the period of 45 days, The bank statement of my account shows that I never received a payment for two months, And the day I asked you about payment, You banned me.

    I am sorry to say that no legitimate company does that, All of my above 4 points are based on facts and figures, However your don't possess any weight, However I will leave my readers to decide and would like to appeal every blogger and webmaster outthere to share my story with their readers.

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  10. Hey Rafay. First I totally agree from your point. Infolinks is totally SCAM. They blocked my account as well without any reason. My all website blocked, they also don't give my money which is about 1500$. Same reason they given to me "Illegal Advertisement and content"
    I am also publishing Infolink Scam on my Blog...

    Khawar Junjoi

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  11. i have also installed it on my blog.But didn't get any money.
    i am going to remove them.Thanks for your kind infromation.

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  12. Infolinks is a complete fraud, they will pay you properly for first few months, then they will stop paying, I don't recommend infolinks for new publishers.

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  13. Number one FRAUD company!!
    ***k you - Infolinks!!

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  14. I was about to sign up for infolinks, Thank God I came across your post.

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  15. Rafay bro i have one question not related to this topic but i have got to know ans, if its easy for you, i want to know why you are not trying adsense on your website? or not running adsense on you site? is there any issue? i saw many hacking sites with running adsense.can you please tell me?

    ReplyDelete
  16. I run a cricket website and I have infolinks.
    I do get less revenue but they pay me anyway via paypal.

    Probably you didn't do any fraud yourself. I believe you did get traffic but I guess they didn't like your website content.

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  17. They are 100% fraud....

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  18. They have paid me 15 times in last 16months as they pay after 45days... they are not fraud, i am the admin of isoftdl and hackingloops. If u want i can show you proofs of my last 15 payments, the total amount is around 1763$ till today.. and waiting for my new payment due on this 15...I found infolinks one of the most genuine advertising sites. They pay little less but they are the one which actually pays.
    Maybe you have tried to get fake clicks by getting with your gang thats why they blocked your account. You are hacker like me and why u missed that proxy clicks are traceable as when u click on add, javascript is processed which access to your systems javascript plugin that means make a direct connection between website and your pc(Global NAT IP). So they will know your exact IP. Never try to fraud them. Same technique google use to detect adsense frauds.

    Proxies only protect against you

    ReplyDelete
  19. @Lokesh Singh

    Your first statement is "They have paid me 15 times in last 16months" is mathematically wrong, As they are paying you after every 45 days then they would have payed you only 10 times not 15 times.

    As I have mentioned before that they do not have problems with small publishers, If you can divide 1763 by 10, It means that you are earning 173$ every month, I was one of their top publishers and was earning well above 1200$ every month. Luckily for you that might not had detected your content yet and I wish that they really don't come across it ever.

    Lastly about your fraud part, I was really overwhelmed to see your comments about the fraud and fake clicks. Here is the point RHA gets around 20k+ visitors daily I don't have enough time to check my blog and write on it, how would I have time to make a gang and tunneling through proxies to get the clicks done.

    Your statement "You are hacker like me and why u missed that proxy clicks are traceable as when u click on add, javascript is processed which access to your systems javascript plugin that means make a direct connection between website and your pc(Global NAT IP). So they will know your exact IP. Never try to fraud them. Same technique google use to detect adsense frauds.
    "

    Well according to my knowledge this is not how proxy clicks are traced, Proxies cannot be traced until some one has access to the logs, The way how google adsense or infolinks or any other advertising company detects fraudulent clicks, There are couple of online websites on internet that maintain a spam iP blacklist, They have a whole database of possible IP's used by proxies(They also use other methods). The IP addresses are compared with them and returned if they are proxies or not.

    If I really needed to do fraud with them, I own several botnets I can connect the PC's to a TOR network and could have instructed them to click the ads. I can tunnel though other computers, there are tons of ways. But I play Ethical, to me money really does not matter really much, but I really need to use ads to run my online business.

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  20. i also use infolinks on my site..but what i found is that they give very very less per click sometimes don't

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  21. I've just started to use infolinks and the initial results are very bad. Maybe they will improve with time.
    BTW, your Floating Share box at the left isn't rendering properly.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Infolinks is another abomination in the long list of abominates that secretly and systematically steals your money from you. I recently disabled Infolinks from all my sites and begged them to close my account while keeping the whole shebang I earned and shamelessly they did so!

    It began when I started receiving relentless emails from them saying I need to declare my Taxation through Infolinks through W8-BEN. I do submit them from year to year and after sending them copies of my W8-BEN forms repeatedly all I got was SQUAT! No Reply! No reasonable answer! instead I get same email for going down the memory lane again and again following the same steps....

    This time I thought they better shut me down for good! Since they are not financially or most importantly not a bit morally backed up, they did the same without shame! So, The dime and time I lost don't matter they proved themselves shamelessly to be ignorant and money laundering leeches!

    STAY AWAY FROM INFOLINKS !!!

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  23. @Rafay

    I think you are misguided again, 45 days is the maximum limit of duration to issue a payment on infolinks. Normally they issue payments in 28-30 days.If you wish i can show you paypal payment received snapshots.

    Secondly, Let's dig little more deeper how proxy's actually work. The proxy server is nothing but just a web cache service running on Squid proxy port 3128(port can be changed but not service) where user sends their request, first server makes the hit in its own CMS if found return from there else it go to web , pick it up and store that in its own database n then fulfills your request. Also, I am not saying that your explanation is wrong but you are connecting the wrong thing at wrong place. Have you ever tried to render the infolinks or google adsense javascripts using the firebug ( in firefox) and ideveloper( In IE). Just debug those scripts and you will have the clear picture of how ad clicks are being handled. While using firebug just record the scripts in below cases:
    1. Click the advertisement using direct connection.
    2. Click the advertisement using proxy
    Now you will notice the actual difference as your firebug rendering will produce two different javascripts for both the cases. Now when you explore the DOM then you can actually select the rendered javascript and check its code.

    I know you are hacker but still you are far away from elite's that you already know. Hacking doesn't means hacking two or three mails or tunneling in your own network, or depending your work on botnets(atleast i can hope that you are not script kiddie). Sorry for hard comments but it's my duty to correct you because one day you will join our Elite group.
    Just few details about me :Teaching hacking from last 4 years, CEH, CSFI, SSP, SSA etc.
    You read articles on net for these things work n other stuff but i have already published 3 white papers on Application security and OWASP related issues.
    If you wish i can write a complete article for you How proxies work and how to use firebug to render website scripts and hack things.

    ReplyDelete
  24. @Lokesh Singh
    Well I believe your comment should be more focused on Infolinks rather than explaining on how a proxy server works.
    The point I made was the following and you are deeply confusing yourself.

    "The way how google adsense or infolinks or any other advertising company detects fraudulent clicks, There are couple of online websites on internet that maintain a spam iP blacklist, They have a whole database of possible IP's used by proxies(They also use other methods). The IP addresses are compared with them and returned if they are proxies or not."


    Your statement "I know you are hacker but still you are far away from elite's that you already know. Hacking doesn't means hacking two or three mails or tunneling in your own network, or depending your work on botnets(atleast i can hope that you are not script kiddie). Sorry for hard comments but it's my duty to correct you because one day you will join our Elite group."

    I hate to call my self a hacker as Penetration tester is the correct word, Nor I would like to associate myself with any Elite groups, and I also don't like to publicize my self unnecessary. I can go on and on talking about my publications and pentests. But it would sound like RHA commercial.

    "Hacking doesn't means hacking two or three mails or tunneling in your own network, or depending your work on botnets(atleast i can hope that you are not script kiddie)"

    I certainly agree with you that hacking does mean gaining access to few emails, but with according to your statement the definition according to you will be one who hacks thousands of email. The point I am trying to make here is that Hacking is categorized in to many many categories ranging from Reverse engineering to Malware Analysis.

    There are so many categories that it's not possible for any one to master all of them, So therefore I won't call any one an Elite hacker No offence at-least you and me.

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  25. Yes... This infolinks really sucks

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  26. as well known blogger i agree.At this moment i have earned well above 100 000$ from adsense.But fromm infolinks i got nothing not even a dime.

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  27. can i know how to remove infolinks from my blog?

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  28. I am buying traffic from InfoLinks. Out of a few hundred clicks, not one person clicked anything on my page? I am attempting to see if the javascript is even loading. Even at .04 a click, I have spent $10 and haven't receive anything but page views.

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  29. Yes, Infolinks has screwed me (as a Publisher) and I'm beyond disgusted regarding their lack of concern for their customers. Their nonchalant way of letting you know that your account is suspended and earnings revoked is just disrespectful and sickening.

    I was accused of having fraudulent activities on my site and of course I'm NOT GUILTY. Do you think they asked if I'm guilty or tried to get my side of the story? NOPE! Do you think they told me what these activities were? NOPE! I just get a unprofessional email telling me that I'm screwed and to be sure and remove their code from my site! Ugh.

    STAY AWAY FROM INFOLINKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  30. I agree with you Rafay.I started with Infolinks earning around $4 a day for one week,then I added the related tags and my earnings jumped to $12 for one day.After this,my earnings have been steadily decreasing by the day down to $2 a day.This is strange because while my clicks are increasing,the earnings are decreasing and all my traffic is from search engines.I think Infolinks is a scam,when you starting earning a lot of money,they start shaving your earnings.It seems they have a secret earnings threshold after which they start reducing your CPM.I predict my earnings will come to a few cents in a few days,then I will remove them completely.In all the forums,everyone is complaining about their earnings decreasing after a few weeks or months.Google Adsense have strict terms but at least they dont shave your earnings like Infolinks.

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  31. My experience with Infolinks has been terrible. I opened an account, set up campaigns and have not received a single click. But the big problem is that no one has responded to my numerous emails for help! Stay away from this company!

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  32. They were okay for about the first year for me. Now I haven't seen a payment from them since April 2012, it's now the beginning of September 2012. I don't earn much from them, at first I was earning aproximately 500 a month, then one day it dropped off to about 150.00 a month, and they emailed me asking why it had dropped off. I told them that I didn't know but would keep an eye on it.

    They continued to make their payments and my account never "bounced" back to what it was originally. It's now been stuck down in the $125 to $150 range each month, but the cake topper is that I've not seen a payment in 4 months from them, yeah it's not a lot, but hey $600 is $600 and I'd like it sometime very soon.

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  33. lol so true INFOLINKS is FRAUDULENT!!! They Banned me all of a sudden when my website started making 300 a day with more than 2 million page views a day. LOL! They are horrible and a disgusting company.

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  34. Dear obviously if you are using with a hacking blog you do have to remove infolinks from their. :p

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  35. infolinks is completly FRAUD, do not waste your time on them!

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  36. Which account has been closed bank account or info links account

    ReplyDelete

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