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Mobile cloaking? DMR or SSL or Both? (11)

08-09-2012 03:52 AM #1 kfeng113 (Member)
Mobile cloaking? DMR or SSL or Both?

Hey Guys,

I'm new to cloaking and generally I try to stay away from blackhat stuff. The advertiser is super strict on their end and our traffic is backing out really well for them, but I'm told they don't mind stiffing affiliates for the hell of it. I'm working close with the network manager and AM to make sure we're good. My question is:

Should I do:

1. Double Meta Refresh (adds load time)
2. Host my LP on SSL (adds load time)

or both? If I do both, will it hide 100% of my referrers?

Also, I'm a little bit of a PHP newb, how would I incorporate the DMR into my landing page flow?

I'm looking to do this in the mobaff tracker which works in this fashion WITHOUT DMR

1. Affiliate Link Placed Inside Mobaff Tracker (my landing page with subid token appended)

Code:

http://www.mydomain.com/index.php&subid=[subid]

2. Place PHP script at top of index.php to pass Subid

Code:

<?php

$subid = $_GET['subid'];

//OFFER NAME

$link1 = 'http://www.affnetworkexample.com/1234/?aff_sub=' . $subid;

?>

(also change hrefs to
Code:

<a href="<?php echo ($link1);?>">Click Here Now</a>

in index.php)

Turtle Mentions in one of his previous posts on how to DMR:

Originally Posted by turtle

Here's how you do a DMR without the need for prosper... First create two separate files to save to your root of your server... We will call them index.php and index2.php.

File 1: index.php
[PHP]<?php
echo "<meta http-equiv=\"refresh\" content=\"0;url=http://www.yoursite.com/index2.php\">";
?>[/PHP]

File 2: index2.php
[PHP]<?php
$referer = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
if($referer == "")
{
echo "<meta http-equiv=\"refresh\" content=\"0;url=http://www.youraffiliatelink.com\">";
}
else
{
echo "<meta http-equiv=\"refresh\" content=\"0;url=http://www.yoursite.com\">";
}
?>[/PHP]

Simply upload both files to your root directory and send your traffic to the index.php file on your website. Sometimes browsers leak referrer info anyway... The second index file should help to prevent that by checking if the referrer is blank prior to redirecting.

So if my logic is correct here, all I need to ensure is that the subid is passed in index2.php

Is the code correct on index.php & index2.php

File 1: index.php

PHP Code:

Code:

<?php

$subid = $_GET['subid'];

//OFFER NAME

$link1 = 'http://www.affnetworkexample.com/1234/?aff_sub=' . $subid;

?>

Code:

<?php 
echo "<meta http-equiv=\"refresh\" content=\"0;url=http://www.yoursite.com/index2.php\">"; 
?>

File 2: index2.php

PHP Code:

Code:

<?php

$subid = $_GET['subid'];

//OFFER NAME

$link1 = 'http://www.affnetworkexample.com/1234/?aff_sub=' . $subid;

?>

Code:

<?php 
$referer = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']; 
if($referer == "") 
    { 
echo "<meta http-equiv=\"refresh\" content=\"0;url=http://www.youraffiliatelink.com\">";     
    } 
else 
    { 
echo "<meta http-equiv=\"refresh\" content=\"0;url=http://www.yoursite.com\">";     
    } 
?>

Ugh something tells me this isn't right because I'm just using the same subid PHP code in index.php AND index2.php

08-09-2012 04:15 AM #2 The Angry Russian (Moderator)

Not sure about cloaking but hoping this isn't for one of our offers.

08-09-2012 04:42 AM #3 seitzy12 (Member)

Originally Posted by The Angry Russian

Not sure about cloaking but hoping this isn't for one of our offers.

busteddd, yeahhhhh

08-09-2012 07:13 AM #4 snipe (Member)

With turtle's code, passing the subid would look like this:

File 1: index.php
[PHP]<?php
$subid = $_GET['subid'];
echo "<meta http-equiv=\"refresh\" content=\"0;url=http://www.yoursite.com/index2.php?subid=".$subid."\">";
?>[/PHP]

File 2: index2.php
[PHP]<?php
$subid = $_GET['subid'];
$referer = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
if($referer == "")
{
echo "<meta http-equiv=\"refresh\" content=\"0;url=http://www.youraffiliatelink.com?subid=".$subid."\">";
}
else
{
echo "<meta http-equiv=\"refresh\" content=\"0;url=http://www.yoursite.com\">";
}
?>[/PHP]

But if you're doing serious long-term money with this, I'd go a bit more advance (expiring database sessions).

08-09-2012 01:19 PM #5 kfeng113 (Member)

Originally Posted by The Angry Russian

Not sure about cloaking but hoping this isn't for one of our offers.

Hey Alex,

It totally isn't, it's on a diff network, as mentioned in the first paragraph, I'm working closely w/ my AM on it, I'd let Peter and/or Josh know about it I were ever doing it, I've been doing AM for about 3 years and this is my first time doing cloaking

08-09-2012 01:29 PM #6 The Angry Russian (Moderator)

Originally Posted by kfeng113

No worries I'm just giving you a hard time.

We were thinking about building a cloaking component into the tracker and is still one of the many features we're considering.

08-14-2012 04:43 PM #7 zealous (Member)

Curious about this as well.

Right now I'm sending traffic to http://nullrefer.com/?<link> 'cos that seems really simple.

I know this must be terrible for mobile load times, but I figure I want a 100% blank referer.

What are the pros doing for this?

08-14-2012 07:45 PM #8 Mr Baffoe (Veteran Member)

In a perfect world you wouldn't have to cloak because conversions are sooooooo much better when you are not cloaking.

08-14-2012 08:40 PM #9 snipe (Member)

Originally Posted by zealous

Pros of doing what? Blanking? or using nullrefer?

From what I can see going via nullrefer only has cons!
From first glance they just have a meta refresh on the redirect page, which you could easily put up on your own (probably faster hosting).
They load a statcounter with every visit (from an external domain), adding unnecessary load time.

You should also note, with meta-refresh the refer is not always blanked on some devices the refer will show as nullrefer.com
The script mentioned in the OP will check if that 'vulnerability' exists (to see if a browser properly hides the refer) before sending the user on.

Just a FYI to all reading this thread, a bit obvious but still people are mixing up the two terms, cloaking and blanking are different.
Cloaking: Gives a fake refer
Blanking: Gives a no refer

08-15-2012 01:43 AM #10 zealous (Member)

Originally Posted by snipe

Nah like... What are the PROS doing?

Switching to self-hosted DMR... let's see.

08-15-2012 08:17 AM #11 snipe (Member)

Originally Posted by zealous

Nah like... What are the PROS doing?

Switching to self-hosted DMR... let's see.

To many methods to cover in a single post, but if you really are serious about it shoot me a PM and we can talk more.

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