"iGaming Business.. for goodness sake let me unsubscribe"

[alexpratt]

Previous post was also meant for an alternative solution to Vladi giving up personal info.

Hope it helps you both!

Although I still won't be able to prove this was slanderous and we have done nothing wrong

Re your proposal, I agree this is a good idea although not sure we have the resources to properly do this every 6 months.....we are however going to do a revalidation procedure as soon as we have the preference centre which is imminent.

Anyway....still no message from either accusers, I guess that's what makes forums so dangerous, you can accuse someone of something illegal without evidence or willing to prove it....

 

[ocportal]

Just sent a PM with my email address to Alex.

 

[alexpratt]

Thanks for that - Just replied but putting it in here as well so people don't think I have gone AWOL. The marketing girl (Marit, some of you know her) is off work tomorrow and then in a training course on Thursday but I will get her to tell me the exact history of this email on Friday when she is back.

 

[FictionNet]

This is becoming more exciting than the William Hill scandal!

 

[alexpratt]

Ok With regards to OC Portal - You have given us that email twice -

On one occaision it was to vote in the iGB Affiliate Awards 2010 - You did this at 13.47 GMT on 16/11/2009 - I have some of the details (Name/Company you used) so will PM you

The other was to subscribe to a free trial of iGaming Business which was on our old site I believe, so pre 26/6/2009 so will take a bit of digging as it will be in data that is archived, and when I say archived I mean somewhere in my many folders in the hard drive If you want me to dig I will but it will take a few days

Either way the email wasn't stolen, obtained, bought etc.

As I keep saying we don't do that, don't need to do that, and I know 1000% we are clean.....

I should point out OC Portal is very polite and wan't moaning in his PM, he gets use of the emails so I am not directing that at him....

Vladi.....If you would just PM me your email I can clear that and Andrew can change the thread title to

"iGaming Business.....very clean email list, really nice honest guys, need a preference center but hey they are getting it very soon and it isn't that bigger deal in fact I could unsubscribe from everything in.... I dunno, 5 clicks"

Or is that too long ;D

 

[ocportal]

The first name and last name Alex provided are not in connection with me or my business nor I've ever heard of them. Anyhow please let me know by PM if you can trace the IP that was used for the email verification at that time. I am absolutely sure it was not me but I am very eager to find out how this happened.

 

[alexpratt]

Will see if I can find out where the file is as the original one does have the ip address as its IP tracked....

Interesting though, I don't know how it works but because it's the awards it may have been manipulated through some kind of spam bot but then it would need loads of different IP's to do that.....@clever people, is that possible? I do remeber that year was nuts, we had over 4,000 votes and the file got so big we couldn't actually download it off the back end

 

[bonustreak]

I am sure this will all come to the conclusion of Alex along with IGB did not steal, sell or use under handed methods to gain the email addresses. As just pointed out the award voting can draw all sorts of people using bots to try to get their company, self to win an award, silly but it is true. Then there is the magazine, shows to also keep in mind. It is always important to make sure you UN check that box that says send updates and newsletters etc.

Alex any of the mods including myself will be happy to change the title once Valdi has tried to make this a resolved situation, I urge you to please send Alex this email addy as you can tell he is very honest and wants to get this resolved ASAP.

 

[WCD Admin]

Thought: Maybe the same thing happened with Vladi, and the reason they were able to "guess" his unguessable email address is that one of the places he signed up with that address was one of the culprits trying to rig the Awards.

Maybe some more fraud prevention on that process would help things. Double email verification to vote? If no reply then obviously don't add their email to your list. I'm surprised gaming the voting is so simple?

 

[tryme1]

Thought: Maybe the same thing happened with Vladi, and the reason they were able to "guess" his unguessable email address is that one of the places he signed up with that address was one of the culprits trying to rig the Awards.

Sounds feasible. In which case, iGB don't have double opt-in, otherwise the 'please confirm your email address for our newsletter' thing would have been ignored and Vladi would never have received anything.

Just a thought.

 

[alexpratt]

Thought: Maybe the same thing happened with Vladi, and the reason they were able to "guess" his unguessable email address is that one of the places he signed up with that address was one of the culprits trying to rig the Awards.

Maybe some more fraud prevention on that process would help things. Double email verification to vote? If no reply then obviously don't add their email to your list. I'm surprised gaming the voting is so simple?

The first year we did the awards a company actually did screw with the system but we had a warning and it was easy to spot as it was a sudden spike - They were also just screwing with it, no pattern to the voting....Anyway after that we started IP tracking which seem(ed) to work....

Although in 2010 we had 1800 votes in 24hrs which was a huge spike as you can imagine and upon investigation we believed it was associated with a certain company sending a mail to their entire database (not just affiliates) so we wiped the majority of those votes after analysis....now maybe those votes weren't off that mail and were indeed some clever bot thing...

Either way I think its a good idea to get a double opt in on the votes - I will speak to our tech guys and see if we can make this happen, just not sure it will be immediate as voting goes live for this year on Monday.....I will say though as of 2011 we added in an extra layer to the awards which is a judging panel of industry experts and reps

 

[alexpratt]

Ok found the full list and unfortunately no IP addresses - Also the person who used the email only voted in one category and it was for Onetopsports.com in the sports betting category......I don't know these guys so please understand I am not saying its them

Also as it isn't you I can write this now - These were the details
Name - Mattew
Company - InciteSoftware
Affiliate - No

Just googled that company and it is an Indian SEO company.... hmmmmmm

Also the crazy 1,800 vote thing was actually on Dec 22nd so it isn't connected and this was off that newsletter I mentioned previously

 

[ocportal]

So did my email address get into the list through a bot?
I never heard about "Name - Mattew
Company - InciteSoftware" and just checked if my company ever dealt with InciteSoftware and couldn't find anything, the company name is completely unknown to me or my company. Anyhow after seeing how professional and nice Alex is I will be happy to sign up with my company email address at IGB.

Vladi I believe it would be fair to change the title of this thread.

 

[Vladi]

Thought: Maybe the same thing happened with Vladi, and the reason they were able to "guess" his unguessable email address is that one of the places he signed up with that address was one of the culprits trying to rig the Awards.

Maybe some more fraud prevention on that process would help things. Double email verification to vote? If no reply then obviously don't add their email to your list. I'm surprised gaming the voting is so simple?

I guess that is possible. I have never (nor anyone I have worked with that I know of) entered any of our sites into the IGB awards, so it could not be from us entering ourselves.

Happy to have the thread title changed to something like "iGaming Business.. for goodness sake let me unsubscribe". Unfortunately I can't change it, maybe a mod needs to do it.

 

[leporello]

Holy crap, I've unsubscribed 3 times from these guys lists and I am still getting friggin spammed. Unreal.

 

[alexpratt]

Holy crap, I've unsubscribed 3 times from these guys lists and I am still getting friggin spammed. Unreal.

Send me your email = I will check what actual lists you are on and what you have unsubscribed and I will sort it

Also just been updated - We will have a preference center by the end of Nov.....hopefully before

 

[Aussie-Dave]

as of 2011 we added in an extra layer to the awards which is a judging panel of industry experts and reps

With all due respect, I don't see how that would be of any benefit.

If anything, I can only see it leading to favouritism which you, I or anyone else who has been around this industry long enough knows it exists. Our industry is incestious by nature, hence most cliques support each others agendas.

So how do you police this judging panel ensuring there is no bias?

 

[alexpratt]

With all due respect, I don't see how that would be of any benefit.

If anything, I can only see it leading to favouritism which you, I or anyone else who has been around this industry long enough knows it exists. Our industry is incestious by nature, hence most cliques support each others agendas.

So how do you police this judging panel ensuring there is no bias?

This is going off topic now so I will start a new thread re the nominating, voting and judging process including who they are... I just need to grab some supper and will post after.....mans got to eat ;D

Edit - Here is the link https:// www. affiliateguarddog. com/forums/igb-affiliate-awards-voting-nominations-judging-t4580.html#post30856