Protect Your ClickBank Products from Online Theft
by:
Tim Coulter
One of the biggest problems faced by ClickBank merchants is the
risk of content theft - people downloading their digital
products without paying for them.
To gain illicit access to downloadable product files, determined
content thieves exploit a range of security weaknesses, each of
which can be eliminated if the correct protective measures are
applied. Here, we will look at just one area of vulnerability
and a simple precaution that any ClickBank merchant can use to
protect against it. Protect Your ClickBank Products from Online
Theft
Most ClickBank merchants understand that there should never be
links to downloadable product files and thank-you pages from the
other pages on their website. The only way to access a product
file should be via its thank-you page, which likewise should be
accessible only via the ClickBank payment process. Observance of
these simple guidelines will ensure that there is no way to
navigate directly to your downloadable content.
This approach also ensures that the thank-you page will not be
indexed by search engine spiders, which is essential, as nothing
could be more harmful to product security than a thank-you page
with a #1 Google ranking!
However, we should not overlook the risk that your thank-you
page and product file URLs may be distributed in underground
newsgroups and forums. While this may not necessarily lead to an
immediate avalanche of illicit downloads, the risk exists that
the forum posting will eventually be indexed by a search engine
and that this will provide an indirect route by which the
thank-you page itself becomes indexed.
Astonishingly, the solution proposed by some so-called web
security experts is to list your thank-you pages in your web
server's robots.txt file - a configuration file that informs
search engines which pages should be excluded from indexing.
It's true that this approach usually prevents indexing of the
thank-you pages. But it creates an even greater weakness - it
provides any would-be hacker with easy access to the exact names
and locations of all your supposedly hidden files. Protect Your
ClickBank Products from Online Theft
It cannot be over-emphasized - never list your product files or
delivery pages in your web server's robots.txt file! To
explicitly stop a thank-you page being indexed by spiders, use
the following Meta tag in the element of each thank-you page:
Although a search engine may discover your thank-you pages by
some indirect route, it will silently ignore any page that
contains the above Meta tag.
Of course, this is just one of several vulnerabilities that
expose your downloadable products to the risks of theft. In
chapter 21 of "ClickBank - The Definitive Guide", I examine the
whole gamut of techniques that online thieves use to steal your
merchandise and I describe several of the most effective ways in
which this problem can be tackled.
Copyright © Tim Coulter. All rights reserved.
Tim Coulter is a consultant and software developer who helps
netpreneurs to harness marketing technologies. He is also the
author of "ClickBank - The Definitive Guide" The Ultimate
ClickBank Tutorial & Reference Manual.
http://www.clickbankrevealed.com/
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Protect Your ClickBank Products from Online Theft
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