Digital Point Owner Shawn Hogan Sued by Ebay for Cookie Stuffing
According to Courthouse News, internet marketer Shawn Hogan - owner of the popular DigitalPoint forums - is being sued by the eBay corporation for Cookie Stuffing, along with two other men, Todd Dunning and Brian Dunning.
For those of you not familiar with what Cookie Stuffing is, it’s when a webmaster, or other person who has the capability to edit the html of a webpage, uses a delivery device (usually an image or a flash file) to drop a cookie on the computer of anyone who views the page. The end user is unaware of the cookie having been delivered. Then, if the person at a later time visits the site that the cookie was related to (in this case, ebay) and makes a purchase, the cookie stuffer gets an affiliate commission for that sale. Highly Blackhat and obviously illegal. However, people generally just get their affiliate account suspended, they don’t generally get sued!
eBay also recently deleted a whole SLEW of affiliates, sending out a form letter saying that the traffic they were sending to the eBay site was under-engaged.
Personally, I am really happy to see them taking action against cookie stuffers. As an active (AND HAPPY!) member of the eBay affiliate program, frickin’ cookie stuffers take money straight out of my pocket.
The only thing that concerns me is that it seems the most recent mass bannings also caught a bunch of whitehats up in the nets, and it concerns me that if the large-scale bannings continue, my account may be one of the sacrificial dolphins killed in the pursuit of tuna, so to speak.
NOTE TO EBAY IF YOU’RE READING THIS - I love you, please don’t ban me! 
Tags: Cookie Stuffing, lawsuit, eBay, Shawn Hogan
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Looks like they want to make an example out of someone.
Digital point is a total scam forum it is entertaining to see the king of it all get busted with some of the scam tactics they promote there.
Seems kind of sad that the guy was a successful programmer and dropped to the level of those kinds of scams. I doubt any one halfway successful or legit will have anything to do with him after this.
I’m glad to see more and more honest webmasters and bloggers who all agree that cookie stuffing and black hat stuff is not tolerated by the community.
Honestly, any time some big fish like Shaw Hogan gets caught doing something like this, it makes all of our marketing techniques go under the microscope.
I personally avoid black hat techniques and any type of cheating and I truly appreciate others who feel the same way.
Dave, I agree with you.
I mean, to clarify, I *do* dabble in “black hat” depending on how you define that. I believe there’s a huge divide between people who use automation to perform tasks they would otherwise do by hand such as social bookmarking, and people who engage in activities that actually HURT other webmasters as well as the people who run affiliate programs.
I refer to the former activity, which is what I do, fondly as “Blue Hat”, in honor of the great Eli :), and I think there’s a big difference.
It’s a shame, I used to frequent DP when I was first starting out in serious web development / SEO back in 2004 or thereabouts. It was a decent and friendly resource back then, but has gone downhill over the years.