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Hosted tracking - data concerns? (10)

06-14-2014 05:52 AM #1 nzbryant (AMC Alumnus)
Hosted tracking - data concerns?

Hosted tracking, eg Voluum or Tracking202: Is it a real concern that admin/the company can use your data to compete with you on profitable ad/offer combinations? (or tell/sell to their friends?).

ie. Should I only go for a self hosted tracker?

Thanks.

06-14-2014 06:14 AM #2 redrummr (Member)

Honestly, unless you're one of the big fish, you'll probably be ok. I suppose it's healthy to take some basic measures if you're overly paranoid:
-- encode your campaign names etc.
-- don't upload the click costs
-- etc. (your life will become a bit harder though)

Voluum seems really great, and in the future most things will be in the clowd. For example, I can't be sure that the Evernote admins aren't using my custom meatball recipe.

There is a solution for the paranoid who don't want Voluum admins to know anything about their campaigns at all -- stay tuned, I'll be releasing it personally.

I wouldn't use MobiTrax though, they seem a bit shady.

If you want to develop your own tracker (which is basically an analytics platform + postback module and 1-2 other things + customised schema though I don't believe that you need a custom DB system when even Craigslist runs on the free mongodb... which I suspect voluum has slightly modified) then you can do it in a month if you're technically inclined. Tuts Plus has a video tutorial on making your own pretty analytics platform, and to turn it into a tracker wouldn't take a dedicated programmer too long.

My advice: go with Voluum and don't be paranoid. When you become one of the big fish, if you're paranoid I can help you out soon enough.

06-14-2014 06:42 AM #3 iAmAttila (Veteran Member)

Quote Originally Posted by redrummr View Post
I wouldn't use MobiTrax though, they seem a bit shady.
I don't disagree

06-14-2014 07:05 AM #4 cmdeal (Veteran Member)

Quote Originally Posted by redrummr View Post
I can't be sure that the Evernote admins aren't using my custom meatball recipe.
Upvoted for just that sentence alone.

06-14-2014 07:20 AM #5 zeno (Administrator)

I kinda want the recipe now!

06-14-2014 07:35 AM #6 cosmeivan ()

So I've heard a few times that Imobitrax harvest your data, have any of you seen some unusual stuff when using imobi?

I've been seeing some huge discrepancy in clicks from TJ to imobitrax, 40% of the clicks missing from one camp. it worked fine for a week.

I double checked to see if there was some rules/redirect but I found nothing. Really weird stuff since a few months back I dreamed someone hacked my tracker and redirected all the traffic lol.

06-14-2014 07:39 AM #7 cmdeal (Veteran Member)

Fraud and fraudulent behaviour requires 3 main components: Opportunity, Motive and Rationalisation.

In this case:

Opportunity

There is no question that a hosted platform creates a greater opportunity for fraud than one that is self hosted.

Motive

If you are relatively small fry running $100 a day, seriously, there is very little motive for a tracker company to look into your account and try to copy campaigns.

Rationalisation

This is where things get tricky. AM is an industry that has a reputation for being able to rationalise pretty much anything as long as the $ numbers are large enough. Obviously, there are plenty of upstanding, honest people in the industry who act with the utmost integrity. But you will have to make your own judgments on who you think these people are. If you believe that any tracker owners acts shady or has a bad reputation in the opinion of your peers, I would probably want to stay away. Instead, you should try to find players to act and think like this http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...-Joel-Peterson

06-14-2014 09:36 AM #8 vidivo (Member)

I was one of the testimonials for imobitrax. My imobitrax got hacked a few months after, notified Bill about it and it ended up being a paid customer of theirs that hacked mine. He told me how to secure it and get rid of it, ak change passwords, new db, basic stuff.. then said to talk to Ruck about it concerning this other guy that hacked me.

Messaged Ruck on facebook, hes usually always responsive to me but this time all I got was a "seen" and never responded. I checked his fb after some time passed and noticed I was deleted as a friend?!

I still use it but be wary, just my 2 cents.

06-14-2014 05:06 PM #9 cosmeivan ()

Quote Originally Posted by vidivo View Post
I was one of the testimonials for imobitrax. My imobitrax got hacked a few months after, notified Bill about it and it ended up being a paid customer of theirs that hacked mine. He told me how to secure it and get rid of it, ak change passwords, new db, basic stuff.. then said to talk to Ruck about it concerning this other guy that hacked me.

Messaged Ruck on facebook, hes usually always responsive to me but this time all I got was a "seen" and never responded. I checked his fb after some time passed and noticed I was deleted as a friend?!

I still use it but be wary, just my 2 cents.
Hey Dino, that sounds really scary. If you are still using it, have someone decode all the files and take a deep look into the code... I bet a lot of affiliates have already done this, just to be safe.

I won't trust someone with so many tattoos again.

06-15-2014 06:04 PM #10 bbrock32 (Administrator)

Upvoted for just that sentence alone.
Looks like Cmdeal is a regular reddit user

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