According to the well established site, courthousenews.com, Digitalpoint Forum as well as Shawn Hogan, Brian Dunning and Todd Dunning are been sued by Ebay for fraud by Ebay. According to Ebay, a program was created that secretly visited Ebay’s site and dropped a cookie on the Digitapoint user’s computer. According to Ebay’s complaint the defendants “accomplished their cookie stuffing through software programs and/or code that, unbeknownst to the user, redirected the user’s computer to the eBay website without the ser actually clicking on an eBay advertisement link, or even becoming aware that they ad left the page they were previously viewing.”
If the user ever visited Ebay legitimately in the future then one of the defendants would be eligible for any possible commissions. Here is a copy of the actual court filing document.
Regular users of Digitalpoint.com have been wondering where Shawn Hogan has been over the last couple of months, especially since the site’s keyword tracker tool hasn’t been working well for the last month. The keyword tracker tool is one of the main reasons why the Digitalpoint.com forum became one of the world’s busiest forums in the world. Shawn created the keyword tracker and has maintained it over the years. There has been no comment on the forum or even an acknowledgment of a problem.
We will try to keep you updated. Please let me know if you here of anything.
Edit: June 26, 2009
Here is an update http://www.web-directories.ws/blog/update-on-the-ebay-lawsuit-against-shawn-hogan-and-digitalpoint.html
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Published on October 24th, 2008 | Posted by admin |
4 Responses to “Digitalpoint Forum and Shawn Hogan Sued by EBay for Cookie Stuffing”
I had heard a little bit about this…but wasn’t sure exactly what they were doing, or that it involved ebay. Why would someone with such a successful business (such as Digital Point) go out on a limb and do something so risky? I know he hasn’t been proven guilty, but it looks like ebay is pretty serious.
Please keep us updated!
The fact that he has the perfect forum to defend himself but hasn’t said a word, is a bit disturbing. Maybe the silence is based on the recommendations of lawyers.
Who is running the ship at Digital Point?
personally i dont see what hes done wrong, at the end of the day ebay has a shed load of cash and is making millions every second maybe they should use that money to keep there site secure so this cannot happen to start with. ebay dominate there market place but the internet is for everyone to use. i can think of a few law suits i would like to bring against ebay, how is it that they can sell conterfiet goods but if anyone else done it you would get done.
ebay say they are trying to stop people selling dodgy things but to be honest i dont think they care as long as they get paid.
good luck shaun
I am not sure exactly how the cookie stuffing works, but the reason Ebay is upset is because they are paying for every supposed click to their site.
The actual “cheat” cookie is inside a .js script or something maybe? So when you visit a site with “Example Company XXX” click through, it also secretly grabs a cookie and inserts it into the internet browser without actually visting Ebay’s website.
Regardless of our opinions on how rich or devious Ebay is, if Digital Point company is actually doing this, that is fraud…plain and simple.