Clickbank is a large advertiser that is mainly known for informational products such as ebooks. If you look around on their website you find a lot of webmaster related products but also products of other niches such as Business to Business and Money & Employment. The interesting part (for us) begins when we take a look at their requirements for pages, or better thank you pages, that sell Clickbank products.
The requirement is that a thank you page has to be created on the website that is selling the product which will be displayed after the purchase has been made. Many Clickbank webmasters put download information of their products on this page to make it as easy as possible for their customers to download the product once the purchase has been made.
Guess what happens if you search for terms that have to be on those pages on Google ? Right, hundreds of Thank you Clickbank pages appear that can be used to grab the product without purchasing it. This is illegal and I’m only writing about it as an informational article.
I add some tips on securing the pages at the end as well. Most Thank You pages will contain the following or a similar sentence:
Please Note: Your credit card will be billed by “CLKBANK*COM”. The name “CLKBANK*COM”will appear on your credit card statement.
A search for Clkbank is however not enough and we need to find another phrase that is on most of those pages, and that one is “right click”. Searching for clkbank right click reveals hundreds of product pages that offer the product as a download after making the purchase. You could try other phrases such as “Clkbank thank you” for instance.
And here is how you could try and stop this. I’m not a Clickbank affiliate and do not know if Clickbank offers a better way of protecting those pages. The first thing that comes to my mind is add a referrer check using simply htaccess to those pages. If the page before opening this was not on the same domain do not display it.
This would get rid of most users from Google because this is obviously not the correct previous page which should be the Buy page instead. This could be countered by Referrer spoofing but you probably get rid of the majority of downloaders this way.
The only other way to make it more secure would be to create a unique password for each purchaser and send it to his registered email account with a link to a website where he could download the product after logging in. This is a bit harder to code and puts additional burden on the buyer but secures the product.
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15 Responses to “Clickbank we have a problem”
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I don’t think clkbank’s sellers will have any problems. I just went through it and it’s mostly pyramid schemes, dumb tech for dumber people, lose weight, and other products targeted at the retards of the world. I would seriously doubt the retards will be able to even understand what you have written here, much less use it.
Are you serious? Did you only look at like one page? Some of the biggest names in interneat marketing are out there for the taking. I would say who they were, but that will lead aholes faster to their stuff. Don’t know who wrote first, but here is another post and free report on it
http://mikeyounglaw.com/wp/2007/12/21/how-clickbank-thieves-steal-your-info-products-free-special-report/
Don’t see anything on the website either. How are you supposed to find products? It all looks like pyramid schemes.
Interesting article I know many Big Gurus, will not expose their selfs this way but I am sure other new marketers will. Never mind the e-book subject but main issue here is that this people will not make a cent on hundreds of downloads after all their efforts and clickbank should care about this security hole.
Merchants should be providing their own security.
Even if these pages were not indexed there are other ways to get to them. Most simple being users sharing the download link.
i had a fraud situation here with my JORDAN ISLAMIC BANK’s (visa electron) debit card. somebody just purchased something cost usd34.95 on the 7th january 2008 at(20:14:23). i checked with the bank and they gave the details: CLKBANK*COM DOWNLOAD 208-345-4245 US. i’m not sure how may this message might help. hopefully some kind of action should be taken to prevent this happend once again in the future time.
SOME clickbank products are pyramid schemes while others are perfectly legit, useful sources of information.
Clickbank is not a fraud company. They’re simply a payment processor, kind of like PayPal.
Vendors use them to process credit card transactions.
The fraud, “pyramid scheme” products you’re speaking of are the owner/publisher of the websites.
There are many, many good clickbank products out there on a variety of subjects.
On April 9, 2008 I ordered what I thought was a part for reducing my gasoline consumption by
30% from an online ad. It was draawn on my
Visa Debit Card by ClicBank on 04/09/08.
I have not received anything from this company
nor any contact.
I would like to know how to go about getting
my $49.97 back.
THIS IS A SCAM….
We are going to join with someothers who have been scammed in a class action lawsuit.
I thought that CLICBANK would not have any part
of a Scam….
I would like to have some input on this by
return e-mail.
Archie A. Hodges
Hey, I purchased an E-Book through ClickBank this past weekend, and now for some reason I cannot access it. Need help to solve the problem. Could you send me an E-Mail and send me a phone no. to call for Customer Service. I know I am probably doing something wrong, but cannot figure out what. Thanks, Nancy Beckmann
Please Again for the 3rd time CANCEL me!
Thank you!
Vickie L. Day
I did a search on this and put in different phrases and some of the top Clickbank products came up and some of these products are going for over a hundred dollars.
I do not know what company this is for. i bought for public records but they are all tell me i am not a member. please can you help and see to whom this charge is for or if you can’t please debit my credit card and i don’t want to be a member. i called you but i was on way for a long time.
on 9/29/09 I tried to purchase a book on how to make solar panels,PRICE $49.97,I have never received the book or books.Paid for National City bk. credit account.What can I do?jofacre@ameritech.net