[-Edwin-]

Hi Linda, Thank you for your reply.

I think the dilemma you are facing is due to all the fraud affiliates that make it hard for everyone.

Realize that fake affiliates sign up pretending to be me for instance. They list my site, my home address and everything. There's a Chinese affiliate fraud ring that a year ago joinined over 50 programs on most of the main networks pretending to be me. Then they made sales with bogus credit cards, changed the pay-to address and collected the checks. I was accused several times of fraud. These fraudsters do fake apps pretending to be Shawn Collins or the Wall Street Journal or littlejoesmomandpopshop.com.

Some networks get 100 fraud applications a DAY!

So that's partly why you have to jump through hoops and thats why they need to see a site, to try at least to match up and verify your identity.

I can see what you mean, I'm sorry to hear what happened to you.
If they need to verify my site an email to my admin email address would mean i am the owner of the domain.

It's not necessary to ask for more concerning verification of identity.

All is needed is a confirmation link to be set up to confirm ownership of a domain.

Showing a working site does not ad any value in security whatsoever, should someone else want to try to pretend to be me then they need access to my admin email of my domain and should it be that another party besides myself has unauthorized access they can do what they want anyways should i not catch it in time.

Someone can easily use the forgot password function to have access to the registrar account to change the nameservers to a hosting solution putting a site up all without me knowing.

So if Shareasale would think that having a site up is a "barrier" of some sort to prevent fraud it's not.
The only effective manor to verify domain ownership identity is by verification through a confirmation and that's basically all you have. And that's what being done by Shareasale so what's up with all the extra pointless hoops I'm being presented?

You can make security somewhat tighter by sending out a snail mail letter with a security PIN of some sort to the registered address of the applicant in the WHOIS details for the domain.

Domain privacy services would forward the mail to the registered owner so a Private domain registration service wouldn't be a problem as well.
That would make it even more secure instead of thinking a viewable site is a measure of security.

It means nothing really.

Adding a snail mail security feature would mean something.
Someone from a 3rd world country could then never pretend to be me, they would also need access to my postal mailing address.

With the current protocol in place one only needs to have access to the admin email address.

Going through hoops is part of the world we're living in due to the bad practices of other people but this is just outright silly.


There are some misleading points in the signup process that i pointed out that should be worded differently to have some clarity.

If there is a way to send details about a domain you wish to use when applying for a Merchant program to the Merchant then this should be made clear in the copy.

Instead they give the person signing up the impression they will be evaluated every time by a Merchant based on their "Main" domain.

Part of the reason they want to see at least one site is to be sure it's not filled with porn or spyware.

Intention is right but effectiveness is next to zero as someone who is trying to install spyware through the website will not host it in the application phase but add this when everything is in order.

The anti fraud "measures" besides the confirmation email that i see are a joke and making it difficult for genuine people that want to be part of a solid network.

You need to write some content anyway for your popshops site. You can't just throw up a feed - you need some unique spiderfood. So get some content up, then after you get the datafeeds you can break up the content to put on the appropriate category pages or whatever.

I'll do as you suggest Linda and see how that works out.

Thanks!