Entrecard Tightens Security To Prevent “Ghost Droppers?”
Posted by
eli
on 2/12/10• Categorized as Consulting
As a user of Entrecard, where this Business Sphere blog has always been on the Top 5 of the most popular blogs in all categories, I have been disturbed by allegations of some users who charge other users of gaming the system by being ghost droppers. 
The latest allegation came from Martin (Cornyman) who did an investigation of some users who were still able to drop on his site even though his widget had been removed.
Cornyman’s blog post titled “Entrecard members get scammed by these members!” has elicited a stir within the Entrecard blogging community.
If the allegation is true, the ghost droppers will impact on Entrecard as an ad network and a blogging community.
This is because the system of dropping to generate traffic, which is the core and lifeblood of Entrecard – would be in doubt and will lead to the collapse of Entrecard as users won’t be dropping cards anymore.
I e-mailed Cindy of Entrecard about this serious matter, and she replied that the issue has been discussed by management over the last few days and that she should be making a blog post soon.
True enough, Entrecard action is fast, showing that management is now very responsive to issues and problems concerning the users. Here’s Entrecard’s response as written by Cindy on the EC blog:
“Over the last couple of days, we have received emails from users accusing other users of “ghost dropping.” Ghost dropping is a method in which a user can drop cards without actually visiting the site.
“This began a few days ago when one of our users, Martin, removed his widget from his blog and continued to receive drops from other members. Martin has stated in his blog that anyone dropping cards on his blog is cheating.
“Logically, this makes sense. However, it is possible that some users have not cleared their cache and are still able to access his blog. When this happens, the users will still see an entrecard widget (cached version) on his blog even though it was removed. This could be one of the reasons users are able to drop on his blog.
“If anyone was using a “ghost dropper” script, it should no longer work. Our developers were able to fix this problem. We anticipate that other methods will come along and we will address those as they turn up.
“With a large network like Entrecard, there will be users who try to cheat the system, but the majority of users are not. We would like to thank Martin for his investigation. It has allowed us to tighten our security measures and make our service more reliable for the entire community.”
While it’s good that Entrecard has addressed an issue of potential cheating (and I still wonder about all the people who have those flashing banners that advertise “300 drops in minutes” – why is THAT allowed?), I’m still working on forgiving a spastic, shoot-first-and-never-ask-questions guy who hastily added this commenter to his dubious “list”.
Maybe I should count to ten. 300 times.
Well, he didn’t bother to inform me or any of our autism team, and I heard from it after the blogpost of entrecard.
I’m glad matters are solved and it has been made clear that we’re not to blame.
I doubt if he’ll apologize.
Well, it has made very clear how “nice” people are. Ugh!
I was originally accused, which made me very angry, but Martin removed my picture.
When I can’t find somebody’s widget, or their site is down, I go visit their site in the Google cache.
If there’s a widget, I drop my card.
I don’t want to risk not being a top dropper for the sites I visit every day.
I noticed this a long time ago. The entrecard widget does not appear no matter how many times I refresh the page. But I just let it pass coz there might be a problem somewhere.
BTW, to make sure that you’re not loading from the cache press and hold shift then click refresh.
People are always finding ways to game the system. I would be more interested in a better method of improving my bounce rate. It would be nice if droppers would get a bonus for sticking around a little longer.
Why doesn’t Martin go figure out a way to bust those who aren’t posting regularly or carrying a virus on their blog? And who died and left him Patrol Boy of EC?? I think him accusing folks without looking into it more was irresponsible and mean.
I was also accused by Mr. Corny, who according to some other comments I’ve seen, got a lot of bloggers kicked out of EC with his accusations (which apparently were for the most part unfounded) – I responded on his blog.
IN REAL TIME I visited your blog and dropped an entrecard: Sometimes you’ll see me on your twitter or MyBlogLog widget – except when I’m on the public library’s PC
I believe the very best response I’ve seen to this “controversy” can be found HERE.
I don’t know how scientific or factual this post was but, I can tell you that there were a lot of innocent victims and entrecard probably should not have patted this guy on the back for it.
Why would someone go to (and I don’t know how to and wonder about this), a different place in their computer the cache to drop a card as Larry indicates he did. If the widget isn’t there, I don’t try to drop, I report them as not having a widget.
Am surprised to see you actually got a response from your email to EC. I stopped looking at their blog when their closed comments and the forum. Both of those actions made it pretty clear to me they were not in any way interested in anyone’s thoughts, ideas, or opinions.
It takes time to drop 300 and on days like yesterday when I work an 11 hour shift and come home with throbbing legs and back, I don’t get it done. So am always surprised for some life doesn’t get in the way and question what method they use to drop 300 every single day. I never knew anything like a ghost dropping existed until reading Martin’s post the other day.
Sandy
They even deleted my blog. That is when I removed the widget. Also my other blogspot blog was deleted from the network because I have deleted it on blogger.
I got a response from Entrecard a few days ago after running a similar test on my blog at the beginning of the month. They assured me it would be dealt with then this whole thing blew up
Hot topic! I understand the cache thing, but have to wonder why not just hit ctrl+refresh to get a new copy, and if the widget is not there just move on. There are enough blogs in the EC system to get 300 a day, easily. If you are rabid about hitting a particular blog every day, but their widget is really missing, then would you want to have more hits than days they had a widget up?
Maybe not handled too tactfully. but I’m glad EC plugged the loophole. I deplore those 300 hits in minutes buttons… that doesn’t help bloggers get advertising value from EC.
If EC would just make it so that you could not drop until the page fully loaded that would help the bounce rate a lot.
Corny, you start making allegations on a rather unethical way. I am an International Communication Manager who deals with PR, Advertisement and Journalism. I am a serial expat and worked directly with people from all over the world – face to face (my counter somewhere stays on 53 different nationalities but I might be wrong, so please forgive me when I didn’t count right).
I visited your sites(s) often since I was curious why people were dropping on your blogs. Now I know; these are drop blogs or ghost blogs. And besides that, your obsession with ‘money making’ in the blogosphere is hilarious; how can a blog makes money with 300 times clicking on other blogs? With the same droppers? You’re kidding me.
Anyway, since you see yourself as the guardian of EC, and did some rough ‘investigation’ without knowing how 2.0 really works, you made accusations and start hurting people who, opposite from your ‘ghost or drop blogs’, refresh their blogs each and every day with new content.
None of the accused people did something illegal, intentionally wrong or bad. The only person who cross borders of people their integrity and privacy and attacked them is you. And I think that EC can do a wonderful job without ‘spies’ like you.
(I will put this comment on some blogs, out solidarity, and only as info).
Meanspirited Accusations by a Clickfarmer should be related first to the source.
nuff said.
It should be noted that many ISPs use caches without their users even knowing about them as a means of controlling costs. Very often, these caches don’t update frequently for pages that aren’t as popular to their users.
The comments posted by these so called “ghost droppers” as alleged by Martin are proofs that they aren’t ghosts..They are for real.
It’s a lesson learned: Before we hurl accusations, we’ve got to gather our facts first. A person’s integrity is at stake here. We can not just simply ruin one’s reputation by posting unfounded accusations. Being dubbed as a cheater is a strong allegation. I believe these people deserve a public apology.
How people reacted and how quick they have passed their own judgments based on the comment at Martin’s blog is disappointing.
With all due respect to Martin, his intentions may be well-meaning. But it could have been done tactfully.
Whether you call it “cheating”, “ghost-dropping” or whatever, we all know that many people that visit our blogs from EntreCard don’t end up interacting with our blog. To look a bit more closely at this, I’ve been working on tools to cross-reference Google Analytics data with EntreCard, specifically looking at pageviews of people visiting from their drop inbox. If you want to do some similar analytics, or provide data for me to analyze to come up with a better metric on how interactive people really are, check out my latest blog post on this topic.
I really don’t need to add more here that hasn’t already been said elsewhere as well as what I stated on other blogs, but I do think Lainy hit the nail on the head. Everyone from EC to its members should have learned from all this.
Hi Eli,
Thanks for stopping by! I used to have EC, but removed it two months ago because I kept getting virus. I found CMF ads works best for me..and I’m glad this issue is solved!
Until I can trust that Entrecard will protect the interests of the dedicated few I will only be featuring newer blogs and leave my more established ones far and away from the likes of Corneyman, who in all honesty should have done the right thing and left Entrecard.
reaction to : aldon @ orient lodge
Ofcourse people don’t intercati as much at your blog as you would like.
People have to create a new account to comment.
Why not use a regular comment system?
I’m sure your interactionrate will increase.
There will always be some sort of method available for cheating. Those who prefer to operate this way will create a new system once the current methods are detected and blocked. It’s a cycle that is impossible to prevent.
As for Entrecard, I believe those of us who have been with them for the past couple of years will continue even though there are cheaters. The benefits of the system are far too good to walk away.