I know that most of you are not frame fans. Let me explain why I need them. I have a few affiliate programs that make me money. However, I have found that there are some people who have hijacked my affiliate id and some who get to the destination page and back out my affiliate code.

Now, I spend a lot of time and money to get these leads and I would like to get paid for the work and effort.

I use a HTML page that when you click on the links, it takes you to a PHP redirect page.

What I need after the redirect is to Mask (hide) my affiliate link so it does not appear in the address window.....i.e. www.mypage.com not www.mypage.com/?hop0.

I know that I can use frames to mask the affiliate url. Is there another way to accomplish this task with out frames?

Thanks
Mike

Hmm, a spammer used something like that in my forum. I reported them to cj and godaddy, but unfortunately, they got their clicks and dissapeared.

Seems that if someone clicks your affiliate link you get the credit. If you post your affiliate link in some one elses forum, expect them to change it to their own id.

To have a redirect and then spam someone is a sure way to get blacklisted. I always log things now. If I see a redirect in my forum, I "freeze it" get the affiliate id, and report to the affiliate provider, who then in turn freezes all revenue.


If your affiliate ID is on your own hosted webpage, how is someone going to change your html to get the credit? Do tell me, as I need to know this, as anyone else would.

I have been assured by cj and godaddy, that if they click from your page, you get credit, and that these big players have sophisticated tracking, where they even track machine access codes.

So why again must you cloak your affiliate id?

Funny thing is I ran accross a script earlier today that was free and would do what you ask. I think it was on pagerank10.co.uk in their forum posted by a spammer LOL

That was not the answer I was looking for. If you need to know why I need to mask the affiliate ID, then read my first post.

I do need to have a workable answer to this question though. Can anyone help please? It's a legitimate question to a problem I have.

As I understand it you want to mask an id you pass through the URL with frames, so that people don't hotlink to it. But anyone reasonably smart wont be fooled by that.
If I understand your problem correctly there are lots of ways to do it. You could check the referrer value to see if their coming from within your domain. People can edit their referrer value but I think it's pretty safe (better then frames).
I could think of more ways but this one is, I think, the best.
I hope this is what you were looking for.

I read your first post and answered based on information you provided. If you care to give more details that is fine. If you choose to cloak your question fine. Seems like cloaking information is par for the course.

I also added extra information for others to help combat forum abuse, if that offends you oh well.