If you have an account with eBay Partner Network to be an eBay Affiliate, and have not gotten around to creating and using your links, eBay Partner Network has announced they will be closing your dormant account.  eBay Affiliate accounts that have had no traffic “after an extended period of time” will be closed and this notice (below) has been posted, as well as an email notification sent. 

eBay Partner Network feels that inactive accounts –whether you have forgotten about signing up or just never got around to creating and using your links—carry a greater risk of allowing opportunities for fraud.  This is only for eBay Affiliates through the eBay Partner Network, and is not related to eBay Seller accounts or SSB Affiliate accounts.  Here is the original announcement from eBay Partner Network:

Dormant Account Cleanup

February 6th, 2009

Hi Everyone,

We wanted to provide an update on cleanup work we’re doing on dormant accounts that have had no traffic after an extended period of time. Note that this is not an expiration of any active accounts. The reason that we’re doing this cleanup work is because many of these old dormant accounts were created before the new application screening procedures were in place and while the vast majority of them have remained dormant, on the occasions when we see these accounts activate, by and large we see fraudulent behavior. Policing these accounts takes our resources away from working proactively with our good publishers. In addition, there is a growing black market for ePN accounts so we want to mitigate the risk of these being traded and again be used to defraud ePN, which hurts not just us, but hurts our good affiliates as well.

I’m sure there are a number of folks who may have created accounts and forgotten about them or never gotten around to building their businesses, which is why we’re posting in addition to sending 3 day expiration emails to each dormant account that is being closed.  Moving forward, we’re changing our processes to instead start sending reminder activation emails to new account owners when we don’t see any activity, and we will include a note that the account will be closed if there is no activity for an extended period. Along with the application vetting that we introduced last year, this is another step in actively maintaining eBay Partner Network so that we can better focus our efforts on our best affiliates rather than policing accounts that carry a greater risk of fraud.

Thanks for supporting eBay Partner Network.

http://www.ebaypartnernetworkblog.com/en/news/dormant-account-cleanup/