Scumbag Affiliates

[The Dude]

Thanks to Lojo (who's on a break right now), I'm aware of a scumbag affiliate who is ripping off the Casinomeister brand.

http:casinmeister.com

It even states "Casinomeister"

What an a-hole, and he knows what he is doing; this is totally intentional.

Domain name: casinmeister.com

Administrative Contact:
Wolf Internet Services LDC
wolfgang sauer ([email protected])
+1.3306740843
Fax: +1.3306740843
60 Market Square
P.O. Box 364
Belize City, 00000
BZ

I'm contacting 888com, European Partners, and Casino Blasters to make sure this guy's affiliate accounts are shut down.

CAP and the GPWA are in the loop as well. If he's a member of these two organizations, he ought to be booted and banned. Just my PAB for the day

 

[vinylweatherman]

It would be more appropriate for him to rip off the CRAPMEISTER brand
There is no proper content, all the menu topics do is present the banners in a different order.

Either he has no idea that "Casinomeister" brand is already taken, or it is a ploy for the search engines.

How are YOU able to get scumbag affiliate accounts shut down so easily, yet casinos seem incapable of shutting down the accounts of the more common and annoying spamming affiliates?

 

[pokeraddict]

It looks to me like the domain is just parked on Fabulous. All of the links on it are PPC type adds that people buy like Google Adsense. The guy that owns the site is a scumbag but the affiliate links could belong to innocent Fabulous advertisers. I'm not completely up on that system but that is my take.

 

[winbig]

It looks to me like the domain is just parked on Fabulous. All of the links on it are PPC type adds that people buy like Google Adsense. The guy that owns the site is a scumbag but the affiliate links could belong to innocent Fabulous advertisers. I'm not completely up on that system but that is my take.

IMO if it was simply parked, it wouldn't show "casinomeister" at the top....

 

[SlotsWizard]

IMO if it was simply parked, it wouldn't show "casinomeister" at the top....

Yeah, those are affiliate links. And their "content" pages are all crap too. I just can't frigging imagine that sites like this actually make money, and if they do, then I guess I need to overhaul my site.

 

[pokeraddict]

You don't think he can put a title/header on a parked PPC page? I know on some you can but I don't know about Fabulous at all. The only places I see it on that site are the title and header.

The bogus whois info is enough to go to ICANN and their registrar about.

 

[babs7262]

What a jerk! No worries Bryan, the real gamers will catch on and this will catch up to him

 

[USA2112]

Pretty bad, the guy even put casinomeister right up top, not sure if it will be to his advantage though. Heres another freindly foe, atleast he didn't use your name on the page. http: casinosmeister.com

 

[jetset]

LOL - did you see the copyright slug at the bottom of that page - "Honest Casinos"

I guess riding on the back of the original and only Casinomeister is a backhanded compliment, but it must be infuriating to see a brand that you have built up over years of hard work abused like this.

 

[jargon]

You bet this was done intentionally. Check the way back for the domain casinmeister.com pay particular attention to the May 23, 2006 entry. Run a whois on the domain listed in the top header.

Registrant [2552]:
E Net Marketing Ltd.
P.O. Box W425
St. Johns
Antigua
10001
AG

Just mere speculation but I think this may yield better results.

Perhaps?

greek39

 

[jargon]

I am unable to edit my posts so please disregard the Registrant info. Just again specualting but this has all the trademarks of a particular BH person. Perhaps someone you may have shammed recently? I remain uncertain.

Pretty darn sad!

greek39

 

[winbig]

Hey Bryan, did you notice that casinmeister.com has a link to

You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.

?

Surely this is the person behind it all.

Also owns: casinopresent.com, same registration info.

Hey, maybe you could go buy his house! As of Oct 2007, it was up for sale for $314,900. Maybe it's still available

You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.

Registrant:
Ivan Velychko
341 Flagstone Way
Newmarket, Ontario L3X2R9
CA

Registrar: DOMAINBANK
Domain Name: CASINOBONUS4U.COM
Created on: 02-JAN-01
Expires on: 02-JAN-11
Last Updated on: 27-JUL-07

Administrative, Technical Contact:
Velychko, Ivan [email protected]
341 Flagstone Way
Newmarket, Ontario L3X2R9
CA
4162197217


Domain servers in listed order:
NS3.POWWEB.COM
NS1.POWWEB.COM

 

[RobWin]

The web page still loads up and it still says Casinomeister !!

 

[winbig]

The web page still loads up and it still says Casinomeister !!

Yep, the only thing that has changed are the casinos that they're advertising. I guess it'll take more than shutting their affiliate accounts down to make them stop, seeing as how there's always rogue casinos out there that will welcome them as a BH affiliate.

I guess it'll take legal action on Bryan's part to shut them down for good.

 

[RobWin]

Yep, the only thing that has changed are the casinos that they're advertising. I guess it'll take more than shutting their affiliate accounts down to make them stop, seeing as how there's always rogue casinos out there that will welcome them as a BH affiliate.

I guess it'll take legal action on Bryan's part to shut them down for good.

Yep, Bryan needs to hire a lawyer and sue their asses off for stealing his good name...that's for damn sure, I'm just curious if it comes up in a google search, think I'll try a couple different search engines to see what happens...

 

[The Dude]

Usually, the most effective way to deal with this is to contact the affiliate managers of the programs being listed on the site. So far - lip service. It's been two months and nothing has been done.

So now I have to waste more time.

 

[vinylweatherman]

It looks like this is being done with the FULL COOPERATION of Golden Palace at least. The Golden Palace link goes to one of those "fake landing pages", where attempting to read the terms and conditions only lets you download the software, BUT, this landing page seems to be hosted on Golden Palace's OWN SERVER!!!

It seems the passed variables in the browser bar and base are much more informative than the source code of "casinmeister" itself.

Revealed is the variable of a "member" called "roar0307" passed through the referrer string when redirecting to Golden Palace.

Hovering the mouse pointer over the link to the Golden Palace affiliate program shows the following:-

httscumbagaffiliate://adv.casinoblasters.com/index.php?roar0307


Has anyone by the handle "roar0307" misbehaved on casinomeister and been kicked out, say for being a spammer or shill?

I presume "casinoblasters" are handling the affiliate side of Golden Palace, either directly, or by acting as a conduit for this rogue affiliate.

It seems that only Golden Palace and 888.com brands are being featured now, with another couple of casinos that are likely related to Golden Palace.

Maybe these two affiliate schemes are deliberately allowing this to continue, despite complaints from Bryan.

I think the attack should begin with 888.com, them already being in it up to their necks over Lucky Ace, and previous misbehaviour with spamming, site scraping etc. On top of this, they can be reached through Gibraltar.
This would leave only Golden Palace, who are far more well known for "stunts" involving their marketing, and are known to be "not recommended".

The "consequential damages" sice of any legal action could be on the grounds that anyone making a tiny typo could land on this version of "Casinomeister" and be ripped off. This would cause material harm to the Casinomeister brand image, and consequential loss of business (even if only from one player who believes this bad site to be the GENUINE article).


PS - I wonder if one of those other "variables" is his affiliate login PASSWORD

 

[winbig]

It's even more elaborate than what you think. It's checking IPs of visitors, and if you're viewing the site from the USA, it serves up no links for Golden Palace, but instead uses Golden Casino.

 

[Simmo!]

Ok - I think I can see what's happening here. The domain is parked at Fabulous which is a domainers shop window for buying and selling domains. This guy isn't an affiliate. Some domainers hoard thousands of misspellings, park them at Fabulous and Fabulous run their own PPC stuff and mutually-exclusive business arrangements through each parked page, using standard templates and "relevant" PPC content. The PPC income is then shared with the domain owner.

So my bet is the ads you are seeing are either a) PPC ads under the Fabulous account or b) more likely, a Fabulous affiliate agreement with 888 and GP. So whoever regged Casinmeister has no direct affiliate accounts - is just relying on Fabulous to provide. In fact he's probably getting ripped off himself - I suspect Fabulous have affiliate arrangements and pass back a paltry CPA of something like $5 to the domainer - but he won't be any the wiser and will think it's good money. Judging from the whois, the same owner has 7003 domains, so my bet he/she is one of these bulk-buy PPC domainers. He won't be interested in selling it (unless the offer's too good!), he's not in the slightest bit bothered about it encroaching on Meister, and he won't be involved in affiliate income. You probably would never get a response. The only hope is to contact Fabulous, but all they could do is take it down - it will just crop up at Sedo or one of the other PPC parks.

On the plus side, Google etc know all about parked pages and don't generally index them, or at least when they do, they don't rank them, so the only traffic here will be on typos, and the only revenue will be tiny PPC fractions. These guys work in bulk - a typo might only make a few $$ a year, but some strike big ("Goggle" as an example) and the rest all adds up to a tidy sum. There are one or two known faces that have tens of thousands of domains and make a very tidy sum from all the PPC income.

Because domains are so cheap, you only need to cover $4-$5 a year in PPC per domain to make it profitable. I used to have a typo domain - trillion.cc - which got several hundred clicks a month and would have made a tidy PPC sum in the process, although I let it drop years back. The only ones I have now are acsino.co.uk and casinso.com, both of which have negligable clicks for what it's worth (note, neither infringe brand names ).

The thread should probably really be titled "Scumbag Domainers", although the real winner here is Fabulous I suspect.

 

[The Dude]

This was "Fabulous'" helpful reply from December:

Thank you for your email in regards to the domain name casinmeister.com.

We advise that we are not the registered owner or the Registrar of the disputed domain.

While we appreciate your concern regarding the alleged use of your trademark, Fabulous.com is not authorized to take action in regard to a particular domain name based solely on unproven allegations of a third party.

Fabulous.com will only take such action if ordered to do so by a tribunal administering the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) or by a court of a competent jurisdiction.

You can get the current registrant's contact details by doing a WHOIS lookup with the registrar of the domain.

We trust this information has been of assistance.

Kind regards,

Jonathan Chataway
Customer Care Consultant
Fabulous.com
[email protected]

 

[lots0]

I wouldn't put it past 888 to have actually been involved directly in this.


And it looks like whoever this is, they are laughing at the attempts to shut em down.

if you do tracert on casinmeister.com
this is where it ends up...

OrgName: Savvis
OrgID: SAVVI-3
Address: 3300 Regency Parkway
City: Cary
StateProv: NC
PostalCode: 27511
Country: US


Bryan, if I were you I might put a page or two titled casinmeister or casinmeister.com, have your friends throw a few links at the pages with "casinmeister" in the anchor text... In other words fight fire with fire.


my 2 Penney's worth...

 

[BingoT]

Would you like to see who owns the site?
~~~Look Up Who Owns The Site~~~Great info

http://www.whois.sc/

 

[vinylweatherman]

This was "Fabulous'" helpful reply from December:

Thank you for your email in regards to the domain name casinmeister.com.

We advise that we are not the registered owner or the Registrar of the disputed domain.

While we appreciate your concern regarding the alleged use of your trademark, Fabulous.com is not authorized to take action in regard to a particular domain name based solely on unproven allegations of a third party.

Fabulous.com will only take such action if ordered to do so by a tribunal administering the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) or by a court of a competent jurisdiction.

You can get the current registrant's contact details by doing a WHOIS lookup with the registrar of the domain.

We trust this information has been of assistance.

Kind regards,

Jonathan Chataway
Customer Care Consultant
Fabulous.com
[email protected]

Surely, they just need a court ruling that the Casinomeister trademark has been infringed for them to take the site down.

Whether it is worth chasing is a different matter, since they may simply park it elsewhere, entailing yet another court ruling.

There could be other "Casinomeister" typos out there, perhaps doing the same thing.

The fact that CASINOS are promoted on the parked page though, does seem to indicate some knowledge of what the GENUINE "casinomeister" brand is about, so certainly no accident.

There is still the matter of "roar0307", which must be the way the payments are tracked and made by the affiliate program for Golden Palace, be this the ID for Fabulous themselves, or an affiliate.
This does at least provide a way to put pressure on the affiliate program to disrupt this practice by getting these IDs frozen.

 

[The Dude]

...This does at least provide a way to put pressure on the affiliate program to disrupt this practice by getting these IDs frozen.

The only real way to fight this sort of thing is via the aff programs. It's up to them to gather their scruples and shut these accounts off. So far, only CPays has responded to this

 

[Slotster!]

There is (was?) a load of "Casinomeister" misspelt and permeatation web sites... I'm sure the mighty John Steed was taking a look at this a while ago?..

 

[Simmo!]

I just had it confirmed (although I don't actually know the person who confirmed this as an aside) that Fabulous use affiliate links and the domainers receive a CPA from Fabulous for each lead generated.

So while Fabulous say they don't actually own the domain, they are both monetising it, providing the content and profiting from the name - in fact I'd suggest that they are physically responsible for the content and they are obviously hosting it too.

 

[The Dude]

I just had it confirmed (although I don't actually know the person who confirmed this as an aside) that Fabulous use affiliate links and the domainers receive a CPA from Fabulous for each lead generated.

So while Fabulous say they don't actually own the domain, they are both monetising it, providing the content and profiting from the name - in fact I'd suggest that they are physically responsible for the content and they are obviously hosting it too.

Fabulous just responded a little while ago that they are looking into this. Nothing from Casino Blasters or 888.com yet

This is why it's important for affiliate programs to review where their links are being set up. Many do - but some don't give a damn.

 

[Simmo!]

Hey and guess what - top of the pile now are the Lucky Ace spammers. Honestly CM, I thought you had more integrity

LuckyAce Casino: The Best Casino experience online! ... Trust our brand ... Click here to get started!

Must be right if the "Casinmeister" says so

PS. Yet more spam from them today

 

[The Dude]

Ha ha - what a laugh. As soon as I start complaining about this, I get the following spam mail. Apparently sent out by ME!

Delivered-To: [email protected]
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.9-gr0 (2007-02-13) on
mx12.futurequest.net
X-Spam-Level:
X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.0 required=5.1 tests=UNPARSEABLE_RELAY
autolearn=disabled version=3.1.9-gr0
Delivered-To: [email protected]
From: "Casinomeister's Newsletter" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Subject: *{spam}* Re: February 70% OFF
Date: 13 Feb 2008 07:49:33 -0000


Spam detection software, running on the system "mx03.futurequest.net", has
identified this incoming email as possible spam. The original message
has been attached to this so you can view it (if it isn't spam) or label
similar future email. If you have any questions, see
the administrator of that system for details.


Content preview: If you'd like to subscribe to Casinomeister's newsletter,
please visit the Newsletter page where you can read the latest issue and subscribe
from there. Thanks! http://www.casinomeister.com/newsletter.php [...]


Content analysis details: (16.0 points, 5.1 required)


pts rule name description
---- ---------------------- --------------------------------------------------
-1.4 ALL_TRUSTED Passed through trusted hosts only via SMTP
3.0 URIBL_BLACK Contains an URL listed in the URIBL blacklist
[URIs: eggmind.com]
3.6 URIBL_SC_SURBL Contains an URL listed in the SC SURBL blocklist
[URIs: eggmind.com]
3.3 URIBL_AB_SURBL Contains an URL listed in the AB SURBL blocklist
[URIs: eggmind.com]
3.4 URIBL_JP_SURBL Contains an URL listed in the JP SURBL blocklist
[URIs: eggmind.com]
1.5 URIBL_WS_SURBL Contains an URL listed in the WS SURBL blocklist
[URIs: eggmind.com]
2.6 URIBL_OB_SURBL Contains an URL listed in the OB SURBL blocklist
[URIs: eggmind.com]




Received: (fqmail 10537 invoked from network); 13 Feb 2008 07:49:33 -0000
Received: from mx14.futurequest.net (mx14.futurequest.net [69.5.6.187])
by pt02.futurequest.net ([69.5.6.173])
with FQDP via TCP; 13 Feb 2008 07:49:33 -0000
Received: (qmail 17828 invoked from network); 13 Feb 2008 07:49:33 -0000
Received: from pt02.futurequest.net (pt02.futurequest.net [69.5.6.173])
by mx14.futurequest.net ([69.5.6.187])
with QMQP via TCP; 13 Feb 2008 07:49:33 -0000
Date: 13 Feb 2008 07:49:33 -0000
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
In-Reply-To: <20080213154932.16526.qmail@khalil>
From: "Casinomeister's Newsletter" <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: February 70% OFF


If you'd like to subscribe to Casinomeister's newsletter, please visit the Newsletter page where you can read the latest issue and subscribe from there. Thanks!
https://www.casinomeister.com/newsletters/


Cheers!


BryanReceived: (fqmail 10522 invoked from network); 13 Feb 2008 07:49:33 -0000
Received: from mx05.futurequest.net (mx05.futurequest.net [69.5.6.176])
by pt02.futurequest.net ([69.5.6.173])
with FQDP via TCP; 13 Feb 2008 07:49:33 -0000
Received: (qmail 549 invoked from network); 13 Feb 2008 07:49:31 -0000
Received: from mx05.futurequest.net (mx05.futurequest.net [10.2.1.176])
by mx05.futurequest.net ([69.5.6.176]); 13 Feb 2008 07:49:31 -0000
Received: from khalil ([91.74.60.143])
by mx05.futurequest.net ([10.2.1.176])
with SMTP via TCP; 13 Feb 2008 07:49:31 -0000
Received: (qmail 16524 by uid 288); Wed, 13 Feb 2008 11:49:32 +0400
Message-Id: <20080213154932.16526.qmail@khalil>
To: <[email protected]>
Subject: February 70% OFF
From: <[email protected]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html; charset="ISO-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Antivirus: avast! (VPS 080212-0, 02/12/2008), Outbound message
X-Antivirus-Status: Clean


<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">


So I wonder how much traffic will be headed over to the newsletter section. Guess I should check my stats

I'm not saying that the a-hole webmaster who is violating my trademark rights is behind this - but a coincedence is a coincedence.

By the way, 888.com got back to me stating that this is an issue with Roar (thus the rour username in the aff codes) The casinos subscribe to a feed, and they have no contral where the feed goes. Ingenious

So I guess I'll be dealing with these people now.

 

[The Dude]

Here are some of the URLs hidden in the email message:
http://gfx2.phamv.com/
http://gfx2.hnhfz.com
http://mail.gccpe.com/mail/options.aspx
http://gfx2.ezaqa.com
http://gfx2.utooo.com
http://get.yuomb.com/
http://gfx2.utooo.com
http://h.cbuay.com/

There are a crapload more, mostly there to bring up images in the pharmaceuticals

Obviously, this is an email intended to damage Casinomeister and not to generate a profit.

 

[Mousey]

Here are some of the URLs hidden in the email message:


There are a crapload more, mostly there to bring up images in the pharmaceuticals

Obviously, this is an email intended to damage Casinomeister and not to generate a profit.

I agree, think it stinks to high heaven, and also think it's a bit of a suspicious 'coincidence' -- though some recently banned folks could also be trying a 'pay back'.

 

[Simmo!]

Here are some of the URLs hidden in the email message:
Link Removed ( Old/Invalid)
Link Removed ( Old/Invalid)

You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.

Link Removed ( Old/Invalid)
Link Removed ( Old/Invalid)
Link Removed ( Old/Invalid)
Link Removed ( Old/Invalid)
Link Removed ( Old/Invalid)

There are a crapload more, mostly there to bring up images in the pharmaceuticals

Obviously, this is an email intended to damage Casinomeister and not to generate a profit.

It's a shame there are so many wankers in the world. His/her best friend is probably the computer - I guess it's quite sad really that they have so little of interest going on in their own lives that they have to try and get their kicks by trying to hurt other people.

 

[The Dude]

It's a shame there are so many wankers in the world. His/her best friend is probably the computer - I guess it's quite sad really that they have so little of interest going on in their own lives that they have to try and get their kicks by trying to hurt other people.

Exactly, and look at these choice domains that are getting scooped up. I was planning on launching a new site called utooo.com. Now I'll have to add another "o"

 

[vinylweatherman]

So I wonder how much traffic will be headed over to the newsletter section. Guess I should check my stats

I'm not saying that the a-hole webmaster who is violating my trademark rights is behind this - but a coincedence is a coincedence.

Perhaps you should release a "special" on this, so that all this traffic, if it comes, sees what is going on here. Currently, they may think you are spamming your own newsletter, but you could explain how you complained about this rip-off site, and how "by coincidence" your Email was spoofed and used in a bulk spamming campaign, perhaps as "revenge" for attempting to stand up to the industry spammers.
You might even get a few more Casinomeister members out of this, who will become far more informed about online casinos, and how to tell the bad sites from the good.

 

[lots0]

IMO, it would be a mistake to think that this was a single person, "Who's best friend is his computer."

I have had this kind of thing happen to me several times... Mostly when I made 888 and their pet Russian spammers angry... There are even threads about it around here.. When I Rogued 888 about a year ago.

BTW - those links in the email... will hurt your site if you don't take some action. Those sites that are linked in that email have all been banned from google (looks like google hand removed those sites for being very bad - they are real search engine poison).

Bryan, I just did an Link Removed ( Old/Invalid) check on casinomeister... Bryan you NEED to add an SPF record to help stop these spoofed emails... If you don't get an SPF record set up very soon, your going to regret it... Take it from someone that has been there.

 

[winbig]

It's a long shot, but you could check the IP from which that email was sent against the IP's of recently banned members.

 

[c_note]

Where art thou, foul spammer

In-Reply-To: <20080213154932.16526.qmail@khalil>

And Then

Received: from khalil ([91.74.60.143])
by mx05.futurequest.net ([10.2.1.176])
Received: (qmail 16524 by uid 288); Wed, 13 Feb 2008 11:49:32 +0400

Fire Up the rusty old tools :

Queried whois.ripe.net with "-B 91.74.60.143"...

inetnum: 91.74.60.0 - 91.74.63.255
netname: JBR-NET
descr: Jumeirah Beach Residence
country: AE
remarks: ************************************
remarks: ** For SPAM or any illegal activity CONTACT: **
remarks: ** [email protected] **
remarks: ************************************
notify: [email protected]
changed: [email protected] 20070811
address: Emirates Integrated Telecommunications
address: P.O.Box:502666
address: Shatha Tower 25th Floor, Dubai, UAE
phone: +97143600000
fax-no: +97143916800
e-mail: [email protected]

Jumeirah Beach Residence = Outdated URL (Invalid)
The worlds largest single phase project, Jumeirah Beach Residence comprises more than 40 towers, most of them for residential purposes.

So, either you have a very rich spammer taking the piss.. Or, unfortunately most likely, you have a real spammer who knows what he is doing and they used a bot to send the spam..

Mails hit futurequest.net first, with a UID (288), you might want to speak to them as well. To me, that says he has an account with them

Then
Had a look at the source code on casinmeister.com, he liked using specific link names. Hit google for "486-blackjack" and you see dozens of sites come up :

You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.

Iowa removed from the search results 'cos the first 3 results are for the Iowa Lottery.

Looked through a random sampling of results on the first page, mostly on Fabulous.com (Domains for sale, buy buy buy), Similar page design (look for the associated/Optional Links, using the same numbering system)..

And find links to : Europa, Carnaval, Prestige, 32vegas, Joyland, Eurogrand.
Search google using these terms too :
483-las-vegas
484-lottery
491-baccarat
492-keno
557-bingo
913-slot-machines
921-poker-online
486-blackjack
488-craps
490-roulette

Fair amount of sites there relevant/associated to meisters issue

Have fun, climbing back into my hole

 

[c_note]

Roar

Got tired of the dark, want to play some more..

One of the google results is bestcasinobonuscode.net
Link at the bottom of their home page : Advertise With Us. Link is to : httpxx://dbbsrv.com/refer/14339/10388/14339-10388
Which redirects to
httpxx://www.roar.com/bserv/landing/signup/rl4.htm

Roar.com Pty Ltd
Level 23
12 Creek Street
Brisbane QLD 4000

Roar Customer Care
Phone: + 61 7 3007 0070
Facsimile: + 61 7 3007 0075
Email: [email protected]
Web:

You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.

Manager Roar
Mr Graham Latter

Sales Manager
Mr Paul Pamenter

Customer Care Manager
Mr Peter Stevenson


Welcome to Roar.com - The world's leading Pay-per-click portal!
Roar is a wholly owned subsidiary of Dark Blue Sea Pty Ltd., and is a market leader as an Internet Search Engine.

Google for Dark Blue Sea Pty Ltd
OOOOO, They been WIPO'd :

You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.

Most Interesting bit there is :
(xv) According to search extracts exhibited by the Complainant, Dark Blue Sea Limited is a shareholder of the Respondent. The current registered office and principal place of business of the Respondent and Dark Blue Sea Limited (as well as DBS Administration Pty Limited) are the same, namely, Level 23, Comalco Centre, 12 Creek Street, Brisbane, Queensland. Further, two of the directors and the company secretary of Dark Blue Sea Limited (namely, Vernon Alan Wills, Richard Edward Moore and Gregory John Platz) are also the current directors and company secretary for the Respondent. It is also noted that the "ICANN accredited" Registrar of each of the Domain Names, Fabulous.com Pty Limited (formerly known as Domain Intellect Pty Limited), has the same registered office and principal place of business, as well as the same directors and company secretary as the Respondent. [The Panel also notes that the e-mail replies received by the Center from the Registrar of the Domain Names contain a disclaimer by "Dark Blue Sea"].

Then you get httpxx://www.darkbluesea.com
Dark Blue Sea is listed on the ASX (Code: DBS). The Company also has a Level 1 ADR program through the Bank of New York (Code: DKBLY)
Share Price History from Yahoo :

You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.

Case Study about them : httpxx://www.insor.com.au/case_studies.html
An Australian Internet company focussed on Domain Names and on revenues from direct navigation and secondary sales of Domain names. Dark Blue Sea owns a portfolio of 550,000 domain names, which are predominantly dot com domains, which are freely operated and traded in the unregulated US market.

All done playing, back in the hole

 

[The Dude]

Thanks all - much appreciated.

I'm having my server (which is futurequest.net) take a look at the SPF thing. For some reason this is not set up.

I have a feeling that the spam I received failed to get out since the traffic is normal on the newsletter.php page. There is relatively no one clicking through an email to that site. So my guess is that this spam-hole is just trying to show what he can do without a mailing list. A possibility

I contacted Roar two months ago complaining about this domain - they said they had nothing to do with it. Now I know they do - at least they have something to do with the aff links. Here goes another email <sigh> like I have nothing better else to do with my time.

 

[GaryWatson]

like I have nothing better else to do with my time.

Too True Meister, I recommended your forum as the place to be. You were off last week so I held back the 643 PAB's as a favour to you. Check your inbox

 

[winbig]

Thanks all - much appreciated.

I'm having my server (which is futurequest.net) take a look at the SPF thing. For some reason this is not set up.

I have a feeling that the spam I received failed to get out since the traffic is normal on the newsletter.php page. There is relatively no one clicking through an email to that site. So my guess is that this spam-hole is just trying to show what he can do without a mailing list. A possibility

I contacted Roar two months ago complaining about this domain - they said they had nothing to do with it. Now I know they do - at least they have something to do with the aff links. Here goes another email <sigh> like I have nothing better else to do with my time.

I just looked into SPF, and it looks great - as long as the recipient's mailserver supports it as well. It will definitely cut down on forgeries getting through, but not 100%.

 

[aka23]

Got tired of the dark, want to play some more..

One of the google results is bestcasinobonuscode.net
Link at the bottom of their home page : Advertise With Us. Link is to : httpxx://dbbsrv.com/refer/14339/10388/14339-10388
...

dbbsrv.com is a 2nd tier affiliate program (Dark Blue gets affiliate deal with casinos, and affiliates get commissions from Dark Blue) and likely has nothing to do with the affiliate spamming. If someone sends Dark Blue the affiliate tag of the spammer, they will probably ban him from the program.

 

[lots0]

What does SPF actually DO?

Suppose a spammer forges a hotmail.com address and tries to spam you.

They connect from somewhere other than Hotmail.

When his message is sent, you see MAIL FROM: <[email protected]>, but you don't have to take his word for it. You can ask Hotmail if the IP address comes from their network.

(In this example) Hotmail publishes an SPF record. That record tells you (your computer) how to find out if the sending machine is allowed to send mail from Hotmail.

If Hotmail says they recognize the sending machine, it passes, and you can assume the sender is who they say they are. If the message fails SPF tests, it's a forgery. That's how you can tell it's probably a spammer.

Source: Link Removed ( Old/Invalid)

spf records are being used by most all of the big free email providers like google, msn, hotmail and most of the big hosting companies are now using SPF records... it is slowly becoming the standard.

However as has been posted it is not foolproof.

I have received two spoofed emails in the entire year, after I implemented SPF... Before I implemented SPF, I was being hit by spoofed emails at the rate of hundreds a day and those were only the ones I was seeing, 1000x times those got thru to who ever they were being sent too. So I would say that while not foolproof, it does work better than anything else out there does.


Bryan, I almost forgot, you will want to use a blackhole along with the SPF record.

 

[The Dude]

Bryan, I almost forgot, you will want to use a blackhole along with the SPF record.

I have a blackhole implemented. My server does not support SPF, but they do support DomainKeys which I'll need to look into.

And Fabulous legal got a hold of me and they've removed the affiliate template from casinmeister.com. The BS site is virtually gone.

It's a full time job trying to protect one's trademark. It always amazes me how many a-holes there are in this world.

 

[winbig]

I have a blackhole implemented. My server does not support SPF, but they do support DomainKeys which I'll need to look into.

And Fabulous legal got a hold of me and they've removed the affiliate template from casinmeister.com. The BS site is virtually gone.

It's a full time job trying to protect one's trademark. It always amazes me how many a-holes there are in this world.

Don't get your hopes up too high. Although they're not on the front page, if you click on "casino", you'll be led to a page where the casino affiliate links are listed.

 

[RobWin]

Don't get your hopes up too high. Although they're not on the front page, if you click on "casino", you'll be led to a page where the casino affiliate links are listed.

You always have to check out for the cloaked one's like Win just did...

 

[The Dude]

Don't get your hopes up too high. Although they're not on the front page, if you click on "casino", you'll be led to a page where the casino affiliate links are listed.

My main concern was that the title of the page was "Casinomeister" and that an misguided Internet traveler might confuse this bogus site for the real one.

 

[dropdead1]

I'm aware of a scumbag affiliate who is ripping off the Casinomeister brand.

I would'nt even give this wannabe mini-me a second thought if I were you. He has no idea!!! I find that just the mention posting on the Casinomeister site scares people off and gets them to respond quicker when you have a problem.:notworthy

I have been lurking around for a while now without posting but have just generally been trying to find my way around the site - it takes ages, because there are so many interesting things to read but have come to know that there is no-one that even comes close when dealing with casino issues etc.

 

[chayton]

Exactly, and look at these choice domains that are getting scooped up. I was planning on launching a new site called utooo.com. Now I'll have to add another "o"