Unless Clickband has done somethig about this recently, is's very easy to rip off Affiliates using Clickbank links because the Clickbank part of the URL can be deleted and substituted for your own (if you are so inclined). This way one can get the product cheaper because one also gets paid for selling it.

Ok, let's put it in perspective: A visitor goes to a site and sees the hop link. Visitor wants the product but also wants to cheat. So visitor goes to Clickbank and signs up (unless visitor already has a Clickbank ID). Now Visitor gets his own Clickbank URL for the product and uses it to buy. In essence, visitor gets paid a commission to buy.

If you run Clickbank as a Vendor you may want to supply your affiliates with a decent link cloaker to prevent that from happening to them. You could also refer them to something like TinyURL to protect their links.

__________________
1000+ Free Webmaster Tools, Software and Resources. http://www.FreeStarUniverse.com/
Are You Still Having UNPROTECTED Smokes? http://www.BlockTar.com/