Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Gaming EntreCard, Is It Click Fraud?

Monday, January 28th, 2008

I have been using a new blogging service called EntreCard recently and was disturbed to notice a nefarious use of the service in my web logs.

EntreCard for those who have not used the service is the equivalent of a blogging business card service. Users who visit your site and see the entrecard logo can drop their own card to notify you of their presence, people can also advertise on your site. It is a bit difficult to explain, but there is an excellent introductory video is available on the EntreCard home page.

As people drop card they build up credit point to spend on advertising on other sites, here is where the problem occurs, if someone can play the system and rack up a huge number of clicks, which can then be tranfered advertising, the credits can also be transfered to other users for cash. If there is money involved for clicking on links, people are going to invent ways to speed up the system. The service I noticed comes from the URL http://ec.createlf.com/

Using this system, a user can sequentiually browse through enrecards and drop their own. It is a very easy way to speed through a large number of sites. Add a clickbot and someone has a bag load of credits for very little effort.

At the top of the article I ask is this click fraud, the answer is probably no, the users are dropping their cards as the system allows, but in my opinion, they are working very close to the edge of the rules.

I have contacted EntreCard and asked about details of their invalid click filters, I will post details here when they get back to me.

As you can see EntreCard is not on my sidebar, another fine idea kicked into touch by the get rich quick squad.

UPDATE

EntreCard were very quick to answer my queries and said:

Greetings,

The application in question, which eases the use of Entrecard browsing is currently allowed, because it still requires actual people to visit the sites to drop their card. This allows the blogger to catch the attention of the visitor, and turn them into a regular reader. The use of any program or application which drops your card for you, however, is not allowed. Invalid clicks are defined by our network as any card drop that does not not come from visiting a members actual blog and dropping through that member’s widget by personally clicking the “drop yours” text.

We have gear in place to detect scripted dropping and drop bots, though we do not go into detail as to how it works. When a user is caught automating the dropping procedure in some way, they are penalized by being fined more credits than they earned. Repeat offenders are deleted out of the network.

In addition, in order to earn credits from dropping cards, you need to have an active widget on a quality blog. If you don’t have an active widget, you do not earn credits from dropping. If you do have an active widget, but your blog is spammy or of poor quality, it is deleted from the network and thus you cannot earn credits.

In addition, members can only earn 300 credits per day through drops. This limit is in place to prevent any attempt at a large-scale system abuse. It is currently less than the amount to advertise on the most expensive blogs for a single day.

Finally, our own internal accounting system allows us to track down the origin and destination of any credits being sent through the system. If we were to uncover any sort of credit ring or operation geared towards farming credits illegally to sell them, we would shut it down, track down all their credits, and remove them from the system. So, if you are attempting to buy credits from someone, make sure you know who they are, and where the credits came from, because if the credits are “dirty”, they will be deleted.

So using a program such as the one found at ec.createlf.com is allowed. However, if you attempt to automate the system by scripting the dropping process, we will catch you (as we have caught others), penalize you, and track down and delete any credits that you may have sent to any other accounts.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

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Ask Click Fraud Settlement

Monday, January 21st, 2008

I mentioned in my post It’s Click Fraud Class Action Time Again that Ask.com were the subject of a class action suit over click fraud, it appears that a settlement has been reached and people are queuing up to get their snout in the settlement trough.

A settlement has been reached “out of court”, Ask are planning to give advertising credits to users of Ask/Ask Jeeves if you have they have paid for any advertising after Aug 1 2005.

I can hear the pop of the cork and the chink of champgange flutes in the law firms executive partenr lounge as yet another click fraud class action suit is settled.

If you wish to see details of the settlement or lodge a claim, then visit the settlement site:

http://www.asksettlement.com/

This time it is ask.com who is coughing up blood and laying their money before the conquering army in tribute.

I have real mixed feelings about class action suits against PPC companies. Firstly I think they should be brought to task about allowing click fraud to happen. If they had the appropriate filters in place and they worksed 100% of the time, there would be no need for such litigation.

On the flip side, I think class action suits are an invitation to a hog feed. Money is slopped into the trough and the greedy gobble up all they can.

In the end the problem is still there and the company is ever more secret and less transparent about the problem. Click fraud is pushed underground in case future suit are filed.

As a final note, it is my opinion, that the transparency problem we see from the search engines will exist as long as the litiganous nature of US and big corporations exist, I don’t think we will see transparency from the pay per click providers.

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Click Bot Honey Pot

Thursday, January 3rd, 2008

In an article from Infoworld, it came to my attention that security firms are opening up honey pots in an attempt to capture bot activity.

Honey pots are machines which are deliberately left unprotected in an attempt to attract the attention of bot herders. The nefarious net users infect the machines, and details of the new bots can be reverse engineered and solutions to the problems devised.

Full details of the story can be read the Infoworld site.Infoworld: Malware Honeypots to Relaunch in ‘08

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Google Takes A Stand Against MFA

Tuesday, January 1st, 2008

Google has announced that it is lowering the landing page quality score for a number of differnt types of sites incuding “arbitrage sites”.

An Arbitrage site or a site with the sole intent of displaying ads can be translated into an MFA site.

Whilst MFA sites are not creating click fraud, the dubious practices used on many sites to entice a click are near the edge of the rules. I welcome the move by Google to reduce their quality score. What this means is that Google sets a handicap on the low quality sites in the keyword auction meaning MFA sites will have to pay more to get their clicks.

The announcement was made on the official Adwords blog full details of the anouncement can be seen at

Websites that may merit a low landing page quality score.

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Click Fraud Network Recruit New Blogger

Thursday, December 20th, 2007

Oh yeah, that would be yours truly.

I have been asked by Tom Cuthbert CEO and President of Click Forensics, the company behind the excellent click fraud index and click fraud network to be their resident blogger.

I will be writing about click fraud in a vendor neutral fashion trying to build up the conversation on CFN’s blog.

I will of course still be writing here at Fraudulent Clicks on the wider click fraud scene including news and reviews of click fraud products and companies, something which does not fit into my remit at CFN.

Why not visit their site and consider joining the network. It is 100% free and provides a wealth of resources in the fight against click fraud.

www.clickfraudnetwork.com

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5 Optimisation Tips to Reduce Click Fraud

Wednesday, December 12th, 2007

The following list shows 5 key tips on how a pay per click campaign can be optimised against click fraud and hopefully improve your ROI.

1) Identify your keyword competitors and bar them access to your ads

Reason - competitor click fraud is done by companies bidding on the same keywords as you. If you know who they are, and stop them at source, they cannot attack you.

2) Geo-target your ads to where most of your conversions originate from and avoid the high risk countries.

Reason - Certain countries are more likely to be the source of click farm attacks directly at your ads or through MFA sites. Only display your ads in countries producing an ROI.

3) If the content network only provides low quality clicks with few conversions dump the content network

Reason - A high amount of click fraud comes from the content network, in fact it is the bastion of publisher click fraud.

4) Timezone target your ads

Reason - In the same way you should only display your ads in locations where there are conversions, only display your ads at times when conversions happen. If it is midnight in your time zone it may be business time for the click farm.

5)The higher the price the higher the risk of click fraud. Using standard PPC optimisation techniques spend your money on specific cheaper keywords rather than expensive (and more at risk of publisher click fraud) keywords.

Reason - Publisher click fraud will target more lucrative keywords. Using cheaper alternatives will act as a deterrent. Caveat, I have had click fraud attacks on 1 cent content network ads, so this does not always work.

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Anchor Intelligence Causes a Stir at Techcrunch

Monday, December 10th, 2007

A-List blog Techcrunch has published details about a Palo Alto Click fraud company called Anchor Intelligence.

Their offering is one of the increasing number of tools aimed at the PPC supplier rather than an end user in an effort to stop click fraud at source.

Techcrunch is a blog about Web 2.0 startups and in particular the site discusses venture capital funding.

The story is fairly run of the mill, the thing which makes me comment on it are the comments by the Techcrunch readers. There is some pretty strong language and a large amount of bashing of the click fraud community. What sparked this was (I think) the statement that click fraud was in the high 20%.

Full details can be seen at TechCrunch

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Son of Bot Roast: BotRoast II This Time it’s personal

Monday, December 3rd, 2007

He’s back to avenge the death of his father Bot Roast. All fear his wrath, he is Bot Roast II. Tremble as our heroine is subjected to terrible trials, sigh as our rugged hero swoops in to save her.

B-Movie trailer aside, the FBI have announced that the success of the original Operation Bot Roast, they are launching a second version of the operation to catch illicit Bot Herders who are using loop holes on unprotected machines to launch malicious attacks including.

A more thorough discussion of the new operation has been published on Technology News Daily.

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Sick Blogging A Lister Commits Click Fraud

Friday, November 30th, 2007

A-List blogging celebrity Darren Rowse, author of the prestigious blog ProBlogger.Net shocked the entire world to it’s core today by committing and writing about click fraud !!!

Doddgy moustached Rowse (87) an Australian (say no more) commited numerous heinous acts of click fraud in an attempt to expose inconsistencies with the adsense programme. So how did he test his hypothesis - yes he clicked on the ads with no intention of giving the advertiser a sale or action. That’s click fraud in my book!!

ONLY JOKING, it just gives me a chance to be a tabloid journalist for a few minutes.

What Mr Rowse (not 87) is doing is highlighting the inconsitencies in the recently announced reduction in the click area. I discussed this in a news items entitled Google Tighten Adsense Ads in an Attempt to Reduce Unintentional Click Fraud.

Darren talks about how the Premier partners in the Adsense programme including Google’s own Gmail, Engadget and About.Com are not subjected to the reduced area and possibly reduced click through create by this change. Full details of his shock expose (there I go again) can be seen at ProBlogger.

On another note if the sites which were ruthlessly attacked by Darren want help to identify the fraudulent clicks, please contact me :-)

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It’s Click Fraud Class Action Time Again

Tuesday, November 27th, 2007

This time it is 2nd tier pay per click company Miva which is making lawyers in the US rub their greasy palms together.

The same company has lead actions for click fraud against a veritable who’s who of pay per click:

  • Yahoo ,Overture Services, Inc.
  • Time Warner
  • America Online
  • Netscape Communications Corporation
  • Ask Jeeves, Inc
  • Go.com
  • Google
  • Lycos, Inc.
  • Looksmart, LTD
  • Findwhat.com,

The settlement of the action has not been disclosed.
Full details of the story can be seen at http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com

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