Mozilla/Google's Rival affiliate scam?

[Roanan]

I use Mozilla's Firefox as my browser and have become a bit lazy because of it.

No longer do I waste my time entering the 'http://' or even bothering with the 'com' most of the time, especially for major sites.

Today, when I was reading a different thread and went to VegasRegal to look at their T&C's, I simply punched 'vegasregal' into the address bar and lo and behold, it went to an affiliate page (vegasregalcasino.com/?id=303564)

This surprised me, so I tried TropicaCasino.
Sure enough, it directed me to tropicacasino.com/?id=571104

Now either Mozilla and Google have decided to take advantage of people like me (lazy) and have added affiliate accounts to further pad their bottom line, or someone has paid Google to make their affiliate link trump anything else Google may find.

Either way something smells rotten here.

[NicolasJohnson]

I suggest you run an antivirus scan.

Based on your description this seems to be a 'malware' program. The way it works is you get an offer for something free (free screen saver, a funny picture, an ebook, etc).

This 'free gift' then comes incorporated with malware which has the capacity to redirect you based on navigational actions.

Then they allow 'advertisers' to bid on certain actions. So an affiliate can tell these 'advertising companies' that they would like it so that when you type in VegasRegalCasino you are re-directed to their affiliate link. Then they pay these 'advertising companies'. They can also bid on other actions, like have a pop up/pop under come up when you look for 'casino reviews' on google or other SEs.

This is totally un ethical and something we will not stand. Can you please confirm, via a private PM which affiliate link you get when you type in Vegas Regal Casino? I'll be sure to have this affiliate handled properly.

Kind Regards,
Nicolas Johnson
Vegas Regal Casino &
Regal Affiliates Representative

[Marie2473]

I tried and I do not get an aff-link so i think the rep is right - I do think that ur computer caught a bug--- Still not good - but atleast it is not google/mzilla pulling a trick!

[gloria460]

I get this all the time...quite a few of them will direct you to an affliates site. It's the way they have their pages listed also. If you do a search on google for vegas regal..9 out of 10 times the first thru the 10th search will be an affliate..

[NicolasJohnson]

I get this all the time...quite a few of them will direct you to an affliates site. It's the way they have their pages listed also. If you do a search on google for vegas regal..9 out of 10 times the first thru the 10th search will be an affliate..

gloria460 is also right. If you went to an affiliate site clicked on a link and got redirected to us, then that isn't bad at all. It is simply a way we track advertising. If on the other hand you clicked on google on a site listed as "vegasregalcasino.com" and got redirected to that URL, then it could be malware)

Kind Regards,
Nicolas Johnson
Regal Affiliates Manager

[Marie2473]

i thought that the poster meant that he typed vegas regal directly in the browser - not doing a search at google... ?

[winbig]

I typed vegasregal in the address bar and was taken directly to google showing the results of that particular search, since the domain is vegasregalcasino. The same goes for tropicacasino, since there are multiple results for it.

If I type in vegasregalcasino, it goes to VR directly without an affiliate link..

[winbig]

BUT:

If you type tropicacasino by itself in the address bar, the 2nd listing that comes up on google's search is this:

Sign up at Tropica Online Casino and get $10 no deposit needed and $250 match bonus. Play casino games like blackjack, roulette, slots, poker and many more.
tropicacasino.com/?id=571104

The first result for typing vegasregal into my address bar is:

Vegas Regal Casino- Brand New Rival Online Casino - $12 Free No Deposit Bonus plus 100% up to $1000 free welcome bonus or the 300% up to $300 free slots ...
vegasregalcasino.com/?id=303564

So, it is QUITE possible that either google is mucking up in certain datacenters, or this affiliate has found a FF bug and is exploiting it.

Either way, I wouldn't dismiss this issue as a fluke or malware. Something fishy is going on.

FWIW, I'm running FF 3.6rc2 beta.

edit: It's also weird that there's no "www" attached to it. I've also never seen a google search result for an online casino that had an affiliate ID attached to it. For example, all of the searches for online casinos I've seen lead to affiliate sites, and do NOT simply show the domain of the casino with an affiliate link to it. For example, type irishluckcasino (another rival) in the address bar. The search results it comes back with do NOT have any affiliate links tied to it. The results simply show affiliate sites that are promoting them.

I'm now convinced that an affiliate has found a bug in certain versions of FF.

Maybe Nicolas could look into who owns these affiliate accounts to make sure this is a real person and not the VR/Tropica website having pages indexed via Google with these affiliate codes attached?

[Roanan]

I suggest you run an antivirus scan.

Based on your description this seems to be a 'malware' program. The way it works is you get an offer for something free (free screen saver, a funny picture, an ebook, etc).

This 'free gift' then comes incorporated with malware which has the capacity to redirect you based on navigational actions.

Then they allow 'advertisers' to bid on certain actions. So an affiliate can tell these 'advertising companies' that they would like it so that when you type in VegasRegalCasino you are re-directed to their affiliate link. Then they pay these 'advertising companies'. They can also bid on other actions, like have a pop up/pop under come up when you look for 'casino reviews' on google or other SEs.

This is totally un ethical and something we will not stand. Can you please confirm, via a private PM which affiliate link you get when you type in Vegas Regal Casino? I'll be sure to have this affiliate handled properly.

My computer is perfectly clean. My anti virus hasn't found anything for a while.
The last entry in the history is some tracking cookies on December 12.
(I have 32 years experience on computers, I've never been suckered by spam)

Plus, I have been trying quite a few others since I made this post but only VegasRegal and Tropica have done this, and I did post the links in the OP:

vegasregalcasino.com/?id=303564)

tropicacasino.com/?id=571104

So if this is the case of an unscrupulous affiliate, he's also managed to program a virus/malware that AVG Pro's daily scan, plus an online scan using BitDefender and TrendMicro, can not see.

[Roanan]

i thought that the poster meant that he typed vegas regal directly in the browser - not doing a search at google... ?

That is what I am doing and it's sending me to the affiliate links.

The same affiliate links that winbig found when he tried it.