Archive for June, 2009

Click fraud linked to other types for fraud.

Friday, June 5th, 2009

It should be no great surprise – but it is still amazing to hear about the types of associated fraud:

  • Phishing Sites
  • Sending Spam
  • Pornography (of the most base kind)
  • Trojans
  • Bots (unsavoury kind)
  • Malware
  • Other Scams

Sometimes, these are carried out at the internet service provider (ISP) level. The authorities would love to catch some of these but it isn’t easy. Avoidance however is easy for a determined fraudster, using technical or geographical advantages.

Looking at scale, click fraud is worst for those paying high click value ads. In a way, having a large budget too, makes the attack worse. For example, lets us consider a 10% cost due to fraud. Assume then that in case 1, we have a daily budget of £30 per day and that means that the cost due to click fraud will be £3. In case 2, assuming a budget of £300 per day, the click fraud cost will be £30. You can see what the difference will be over time.

Alternatively, apply the small scale of £3 to 1000’s of per-per-click accounts – per day right? Yep, a small fortune.

It is not surprising then, to find out that with the large sums of numbers involved, that click fraud is linked to other types of fraud where it’s the scale that generates income.

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