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I will walk you through how these online scams work on Facebook
and other social networks - the mechanics of how the money is made, some of the people involved, and who is actually clicking on ads. If you're reading this article, there is a good chance that you are not the type of person actually clicking on these spam ads, but are you curious as to who actually is?
This is from Techcrunch, Dennis Yu confessing to using deceptive marketing tactics to make money from advanced phishing techniques.
I found the article moderately interesting. Social engineering techniques mixed with brute force and opt out deceptive programs will make you a bunch of money. So will counterfeiting. Yu's article was moderately interesting, partly for the fact that he did not seem to want to identify the genesis of the Facebook phishing tricks. Perhaps he doesn't know.
Where the story got interesting was with Jeremy Sdhoemaker's uncharacteristically long and articulate complaint against Dennis Yu as a confidence man. Mr. Schoemaker is a marketeer who made money as the result of the early and lax regulations regarding ringtone offers - he was a very successful affiliate, or third party reseller, of ringtone offers. Many of these ringtone offers had deceptive marketing terms associated with them - but, Mr. Schoemaker was not responsible for these terms. There is no suggestion that Mr. Schoemaker was anything other than a clever online affiliate marketeer.
Now oddly, for a man who likes to speak his mind, Mr. Schoemaker's complaint against Dennis Yu was simply that Yu had conned him - not that any of Yu's phishing techniques were false. Indeed, Mr. Schoemaker outs himself as the target of Yu's complaint:
"One of the largest Facebook advertisers (I'm not going to out you, but you know who you are) employs this technique to this day, using a white-listed account.
Our supposition is that it makes too much money for Facebook to stop him. Believe me, we have brought this to Facebook's attention on several occasions.
Here's what this fellow does--he submits tame ads for approval, and once approved, redirects the url to the spammy page. To be fair, players like Google AdWords have had years more experience in this game to close such loopholes."
Nobody would have known that Mr. Schoemaker was Yu's target but for Mr. Schoemaker's post.
Now, here is what I don't understand. Why is Mr. Schoemaker, and others, making such a big deal out Yu being a confidence man, how they were scammed, instead of focusing on how to prevent the phishing techniques? Is there some reason Mr. Schoemaker wishes us to focus on the messenger and not the message?
(See also the comments on Mr. Schoemaker on Paul Schlegel's blog on Work at Home Truth.)
Saw your follow up. Nicely done. Too much drama and too little facts for me to make a call.
Dennis, my point was that phishing was well known before the Facebook platform was opened, and it appears that a number of people simply changed their social engineering techniques to accommodate this new platform. Don't think it was simply undergraduates programming games.
This is an interesting piece-- far better analysis than common superficial ones of outrage. When spammers work with spammers, interesting things happen.
I messaged Jeremy about why he would be so bloodthirsty, especially given that there is no apparent benefit to doing so, even if all his allegations were true.
You asked about the genesis of the social spam on Facebook. I'm not really sure, as there are about a dozen affiliate marketers who would lay claim to that-- as if that would be a badge of honor. We know that this category of advertising ran on Google and MySpace long before Facebook opened the F8 platform in June 2008.
There is certainly more to this story, but it will go beyond the personal drama and examine the larger issue of deceptive advertising. Listen to NPR Weekend Edition this weekend.
Some great observations, Michael.
I've done a follow up to my original post here.
I did still find it a bit hard not to get caught up in the drama, but I also went into why I think some potential facts from Dennis may still be missing for legitimate reasons.