Various products to stop theft online seem to be
sprouting
up everywhere these days. Code theft, affiliate theft, etc.
Business is tough enough without losing sales or commissions
to thieves. I don't pretend to have an answer to all theft,
but will provide some no-cost suggestions that apply to
PayPal.
Easy to use and steal from
PayPal is popular as a payment service and for good reason. It is easy to
use and generally offers lower transaction fees than other similar
services. But, if you sell information products and use
PayPal as a payment method, you are probably already aware
of the potential for product theft. If you use PayPal in the
"manual" mode and require your customers to send you proof
of payment before you give access to your information
product, your product is safe. But who wants to have to
process every info-product order by hand? PayPal provides
the means to automatically send your customer to your
product download page after payment, but here is where the
potential for theft occurs. The download address is
displayed in the HTML code for anyone to see. Of course you
can use a code encryption or scrambling product so that the
HTML code can't be read. However, this probably means buying
a new product (I saw one this week for $38 that encrypts
PayPal code) and may also interfere with the ability of
search engines to spider your site. I will suggest two
no-cost procedures that maintains the automatic order
fulfillment process while providing greater protection for
your product.
1. Dealing with the View Source problem
The route for easy theft involves viewing the HTML code, which
can be done either by right clicking and selecting View
Source, or by selecting Source from the browser View menu
(IE browsers). Inhibiting right click can be done by a
single line of code. The browser view menu can be disabled
by opening a new window which contains the actual PayPal
code but no browser menu selections. Specifically, here's
how:
A. Create a new page which will contain the HTML
payment code generated by PayPal when you set up your
product sale. In this code is the PayPal payment button and
payment information, including the URL for your downloadable
product. On this page you will also want to add a line such
as "To purchase using PayPal, click on the logo below."
B. On this new page, add a line of code between the body and
/body tags (to inhibit right mouse click) as follows: <body
oncontextmenu="return false">
C. Add the no right-mouse click code above to your sales page. Then, on
your sales page, at the place where you want your customer to select
PayPal for payment, add the following line of code to generate a new
browser window. (It is split up below; make
sure it is all on one line on your page.)
<AHREF="javascript:void(0)"
ONCLICK="open('newpage.htm','private','scrollbars=1,
toolbar=1,location=1,resizable=1,width=500,height=300')">Click
here to use PayPal</A>
This code displays "Click here to use PayPal" and, when clicked, opens
the new window. Change "newpage.htm" in the above code to the name of the
new page you just made. You can also change the "Click here to use PayPal"
as appropriate. The window width and height can be adjusted, if you wish,
by changing the 500 and 300 in the line above. On the new page containing
the PayPal code, your
customer can neither right click nor pull down a View menu.
While this method can be defeated without too much trouble,
it will stop those who are merely opportunistic.
2. Request a payment ID
A second no-cost method is to ask the purchaser
to send you the PayPal purchase ID before receiving the
product download address. But that makes each purchase a
manual process, you're thinking. It could, but doesn't have
to. Using a little criminal psychology, I am suggesting that
you ask for the ID but not use it. Am I nuts?? Maybe (that's
a separate topic!), but think about it. If you require the
would-be thief to provide a valid e-mail address and also
make him believe he must provide a PayPal purchase ID to be
able to download your product, how many do you think will go
any further?
How do I do this? Just set up a page for the
successful buyer to be sent to after the PayPal purchase. On
that page, ask the buyer to send the PayPal purchase ID to
an autoresponder address you provide. The autoresponder
instant message provides the product download address, and
will be sent regardless of what information is provided by
the buyer. Most likely the opportunistic thief, even if he
has obtained the PayPal successful payment address by
viewing the HTML code, will give up at this point, because
he doesn't want to reveal his e-mail address, and knows he
doesn't have a valid payment ID. Of course for good measure
you should include the "no right-click" code given above on
all your sales pages.
You may well consider the above methods a poor substitute for HTML
encryption, and depending on the cost of your products, you may well be
right. A good encryption package is probably a good investment for many.
But for others, these no-cost methods may be a useful tool. You be the
judge!
Glenn Gordon - Building Success Online at
http://www.ur-in-business.com
The Ultimate Autoresponder Guide at
http://www.AllAboutAutoresponders.info
http://www.BusinessBuilderNewsletter.com
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