How The Porn Industry Banks (Part 3)

This is the final installment of my series about how the porn industry banks. In this, I present some examples of how confusion is created within the system and how the affiliates are taken advantage of.

Affiliates drive traffic to the site for a commission or pay per click, depending on the contract they signed. Regardless of this, the system tracks all activity related to clicks, sign-ups, navigation of the site and sales so that the affiliate is properly paid.

If the customer cancels his account for any reason, payments stop going to the affiliate. If he closes his account and creates a new one, he is technically no longer the affiliate’s customer. The site no longer has to pay the affiliate. The payoff is especially sweet where customers with elaborate spending habits are concerned. That type of behaviour isn’t unheard of in our industry. How easy would it be to close and re-open an account? Create any little reason for the big spender customer to want to contact the site. The site then offers to, under the guise of ‘fixing the problem’, create him a new account entirely. Old account is gone, new account created. Just like that. That’s how easy it would be to eliminate the cost of having to pay affiliates. Pretty convenient. This can apply to any customer brought in by an affiliate.

With this in mind, have a look at the screenshots below that I captured from the iFriends (V2) platform. In the first screenshot, I detail how relevant information is categorized in the customer cards; a basic overview. If you look closely, the numbers their system gave didn’t add up. Other oddities occurred, such as customers with multiple accounts, whose amounts don’t add up and instances where I was not paid for fan club sales and renewals. These are just a few examples. I can’t possibly show them all in one blog article. It would take too long. Keep in mind that I was used to help ‘test’, ‘break down’ and ‘report’ my findings to the site. These cards were only accessible from iFriends v2  (2008) but held information from several years prior, on the original iFriends platform.

 

Below is a screenshot of a member who, according to iFriends’ system, joined the site on February 04, 2010. He spent between $100.00 and $500.00 on live videochat with me. Look at the next screenshot, one day later. His screenname is different (a “2” was added to the end of it) and through clicking a link provided to view “previous visits under other screennames with same e-mail or payment information” screenshotted over on the left of the image below, I was able to see his original handle listed but no indication of the previous amount spent in videochat. So his new account was attached (through this card) to his old one, yet the money spent drops off with the next handle. If it is under the same account, then why is it listed as such but the money spent disappears? What happens to the affiliate’s share, the person who should be paid for getting this member to sign up to the site in the first place? There is a certain convenience to the way data is logged on this site … and the way much of it is manipulated, not to mention extremely confusing and next to impossible to explain. You will need to look at the screenshots very carefully to understand fully what I am talking about.

 

 

Here’s where the plot thickens. A third account is created on the same day as the previous one was. To recap; he originally signed up under AGUY169, then the very next day, it changed to AGUY1962. On the same day, changed it again to AGUY1963. If you click the link atop the original card, a window will pop up displaying more information on that customer. See left portion of screenshot under the header “Previous Visit(s) under other Screennames, with same email or payment information“. It shows only his original handle, not his most recent one prior. It should show all of his handles there but it doesn’t.

 

 

Here’s the next one … in proper sequence, of course … (AGUY1964) with the same information.

 

I was paid for his videochat session on (report generated) February 22, 2010. In our minute-by-minute stats report, an asterisk appears beside each amount that gets collected by the site. We are only paid for the amounts the site is able to collect on. Initially, his amount cleared. Note: his charge in the stats report (screenshot below) for videochat sales didn’t appear under “AGUY196” but did under “AGUY1964”. Look at the screenshots I posted above, of the cards. That charge only appeared on “AGUY196”. Stats report and cards are not consistent.

Strangely enough, after I was paid for this, the asterisk that was once there, had disappeared from the stats report. There were no refunds or chargebacks for this transaction.

 

 

Here is another one, grey1beard, who spends money, both as a fan club member and in videochat sales, whose handle gets changed to grey_beard. Look carefully at the dates and handles.

 

Below is another instance where the number “2” is inserted at the end of the member’s handle when a second account is created.

 

 

The screenshot below shows a member who joined my fan club 3 times the same day. In fact, his signups were under 3 similar names and all within an approximate 2-hour span. This is not a member forgetting his password and creating a new account. These accounts are not showing any connection to each other whatsoever in their cards. So 3 separate members all decided to join my fan club in the same 2-hour span, choosing the same name, all except for one little digit at the end? How incredibly dense one must be to believe that. See screenshots below.

 

To summarize, I’ve shown, in part 1, how iFriends take advantage of camgirls (also known as chathosts, hosts, models, performers). In part 2, I showed the usefulness of those so-called ‘glitches’ and the overbilling of members. In part 3, I have shown how they close members accounts to avoid having to pay affiliates. This completes my 3-part series on how this one site in particular banks.

Stay updated with my blog because over the next few weeks I will be uncovering some doozies involving employees of Webpower Inc (iFriends), that’s sure to raise some eyebrows.