StupidScript - 9:19 pm on Feb 2, 2006 (gmt 0)

If you need further proof of the article's prescience, check out the various stories coming out about Jeanson James Ancheta [wired.com] (that link is to Wired's version).

Starting in August 2004, Ancheta turned to a new, more lucrative method to profit from his botnets, prosecutors said. Working with a juvenile in Boca Raton, Florida, whom prosecutors identified by his internet nickname "SoBe," Ancheta infected more than 400,000 computers. Ancheta and SoBe signed up as affiliates in programs maintained by online advertising companies that pay people each time they get a computer user to install software that displays ads and collects information about the sites a user visits. Prosecutors say Ancheta and SoBe then installed the ad software from the two companies -- Gamma Entertainment of Montreal, Quebec, and Loudcash, whose parent company was acquired last year by 180Solutions of Bellevue, Washington -- on the bots they controlled, pocketing more than $58,000 in 13 months.

Not a big jump from that type of affiliate program to an AdSense publisher or a member of Yahoo's affiliate network.

The Wired article on click fraud is simply too believable.