Amazon calls one of its programs “Amazon Associates” program. In short any person who can write HTML code, can open an account and copy HTML code for any Amazon product and then post that code on one’s personal or business site. Amazon then creates an account where it keeps records of clicks recorded on that “associate’s” account and the amount of sales. Amazon then awards that “associate” with a small commission for the service the “associate” delivers.

All goes well if you follow all of the Amazon rules and attend all of the Amazon University classes.

But do NOT attempt to be creative on your site. If you create an image that combines your own trademark with any Amazon trademark, you will log onto your account one day and find it missing. In your email box, you will find an email from Amazon listing all of the ways you violated Amazon’s trademark.

This is why I no longer have an Amazon Associates account. But it is not why I received Facebook Messenger messages informing me that Facebook would be closing my group pages where the Amazon infringements occurred.

There is a problem however. The links in the Facebook/Meta messages were not only identified by Norton Security as being dangerous, when I tried to go to those links anyway, Norton simply blocked those links.

Now what does that tell us? How did hackers know that my Amazon account was being closed?

Anyway, I will share some of the egregious images I created by posting them in this blog. Please feel free to comment.