PlunderHere and AlsoShop: A Web of Privacy Violations, Backstabbing, and Deceit

[rho]

Soooo, are the owners of PlunderHere playing muscial chairs again? Or are there wedding bells - a merger - on the horizon...something old, something new...?

http://www.powersellersunite.com/viewtopic.php?t=33509

[bargainbloodhound]

I use frontpage and another, but don't do javascript. it has funny reactions with php sites.

http://www.powersellersunite.com/post-30...tml#308392
Programming lesson #1: NEVER take programming advice from someone who uses FrontPage.

PS when using javascript (and CSS) ON FRIGGIN' PHP SITES you can speed up load times by using gzip or mod deflate...

QTY  SIZE#  TYPE  URL  COMMENTS
1    20781    CSS    www.alsoshop.com ... s/modern_silver/style.css    Header size = 378 bytes
Up to 17144 bytes could have been saved through compression.

2    14564    SCRIPT    pagead2.googlesyndication.com ... on.com/pagead/show_ads.js    Header size = 464 bytes
Congratulations! This file was compressed. <--the Googleplex knows about compression!!!
1    Not found    SCRIPT    www.alsoshop.com ... e.quantserve.com/quant.js    Header size = 268 bytes
Up to 932 bytes could have been saved through compression.

1    2641    SCRIPT    www.alsoshop.com ... mes/modern_silver/main.js    Header size = 391 bytes
Up to 1559 bytes could have been saved through compression.
bytes 
1    505    SCRIPT    http://www.alsoshop.com/scripts/innovaeditor.js    Header size = 390 bytes
Up to 232 bytes could have been saved through compression.

PPS if you're on a shared server (like ASs is...) and don't have access to the Apache configuration files you can add this to your .htaccess file to compress js/css

# compress text, html, javascript, css, xml:
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript

# Or, compress certain file types by extension:

SetOutputFilter DEFLATE

PPPS I'm not even going to mention that every single one of the 53 images on the ASs homepage is missing height and width attributes.  tolensmiley:

[regic]

I did a quick survey on venues that compress their javascript and CSS vs those who don't (using http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/ ) .  The results are about what you'd expect.

compresses css/j‌avascript: Etsy, Bonanzle, Overstock, Sears, eBay

huh, why would I do that?: Alsoshop, AtomicMall, Plunderhere

[rho]

It's amazing the web works at all considering that most PHP sites incorporate JS.  :blinkie:

[rho]

I have a question about cookies and can't figure out how to phrase it to get an answer from search query in a few minutes. I'm not lazy, just busy and hope someone will clue me in...

When I visit PSU AlsoShop deposits a cookie on my system. Does that cookie count me as if I actually visited AlsoShop? Can third party traffic data being manipulated by ghosting the visitors of another site using a signature banner?

TIA!

[bargainbloodhound]

When I visit PSU AlsoShop deposits a cookie on my system. Does that cookie count me as if I actually visited AlsoShop?

I never noticed before, but you're right.  anytime anyone visits a page on PSU where Mo or the Fisherman has posted they unknowingly are picking up an Alsoshop cookie...specifically this cookie:

Name: PHPSESSID
Content: 3017f20693440f53ec21e9e71a9f2a07
Host: www.alsoshop.com
Path: /
Send for: Any type of connection
Expires: At end of session

It's a session cookie so PSU visitors are probably being counted in the "users online" number shown in the two boinktard's banners, and in the visitor numbers shown in the webalizer log stats screenshots the fisherman used to post in Alsoshop's forum every month.

Can third party traffic data being manipulated by ghosting the visitors of another site using a signature banner?

It would be possible, but I think Quantcast has safeguards in place to guard against it.  For Quantcast you would need to find a way to embed the ASs Quantcast javascript code in the banner so PSU visitors would receive an ASs Quantcast cookie and be counted as ASs visitors.  The fisherman hasn't figured out how to do it yet.

As far as Alexa...no idea tolensmiley: whether its toolbar would count both the PSU page visit and the ASs "visit".

[regic]

PlunderHere and AlsoShop: A Web of Privacy Violations, Backstabbing, and Deceit

Good title!
Good title!

The ASShole duo secretly depositing a cookie on the computers of users of a 3rd party site isn't the only privacy problem. 

Every time that banner is displayed on a PSU page the IP address of the PSU visitor is recorded in Alsoshop's log files.  I'd call that a major privacy concern.

[rho]

Thanks. Kinda' what I suspected. I noticed the cookies over a year ago. Once in awhile I don't get one when I read a thread Mo has posted in but more than 95% of the time I get a cookie from AlsoShop without ever going there.

I just compared PSU and AlsoShop on compete.com and except for a couple of minor points the graph clearly shows a similarity in traffic trends between the sites over the last year.

There is no way to measure and adjust marketing efforts if you're polluting traffic data...but measuring efforts don't matter if the goal is to pretty-up the stats.

It is a violation of privacy. Piggy-backing on the work and investment of another site owner is theft...and never mind ethics or pride in accomplishment.

Oh...this is good...your comment, bargainbloodhound got me to thinking the quantcast javascript might be embedded in flash.

That banner is promoted as "Live Stats".

THE BANNER IS A .GIF

Here's the URL of the current banner:
http://www.alsoshop.com/status/LiveSiteStats.gif

They're plugging numbers into a graphic, passing it off as "live" and dropping a cookie on PSU users.

[rho]

I flipped a few tabs up and watched that banner at different intervals. The banner reflects over 1K page views every 10 minutes.









24K page views a day? 24 THOUSAND? 

4K page views in 20 minutes and no sales?

[LittleOnlineStore]

They are sure a clever bunch of losers for sure. One would think with their clever IP snatching they could do more than create a bunch of worthless selling sites.

I guess that is why they spammed so many threads. Now it all makes sense.