Forum Moderators: martinibuster
whats stopping me from clicking his ads 1000000 times
repetitive strain injury?
but unless you did it from a public PC somwhere, that you've never used, i'm sure G could link the (IP) source of the clicks to the (IP) source of your Adsense account ..
LOL. Yes, please do try it and get back to us.
Morovoer, all advertisers do set a maximum advertising budget anyway.
so . even at a $.03 epc, he will get $300000000 for 10000000000 clicks you do on his site.
just think.. it might just be a boon for him in disguise.. u may hate his further when he buys a rols royce and an island sometime, just because u hated him ;)
whats stopping me from clicking his ads
Nothing - but google has quite a few measures in place to detect multiple clicks from the same person in a short time period.
Of course, there are ways to get around the protections (with proxies, multiple PCs and whatnot), but the clicks won't harm the advertiser much - smart pricing will ensure that if clicks don't generate returns, he will end up paying less for the ads.
whats stopping me from clicking his ads
Your moral compass should stop you but if was that was all that easy my door wouldn't need locks on it.
Get a life!
Well said! That get's my vote for "chuckle of the day"!
(Apologies for bringing this thread back to the top of the pile again, but some of these threads started by trolls, cheats or people who are just psychiatrically disturbed can be highly entertaining!)
Can they do the same to me?
WHo cares if google can see its you? You may be a competitor for rankings only, and want to squash their income. You may be using yahoo instead of google for revenue.
The question is
are intentional false clicks a weapon to fear?
Given enough information about the account holder, ability to guess their AdSense account login, their IP neighborhood, access to their computer, email, .. Yes
But then again if someone has access to all that, the account holder has bigger problems than just their AdSense account!
Which should remind you all to regularly change your account and email passwords.
Otherwise a click attack is futile as Google is in a Multi Billion dollar business because of the quality of its code and business decisions.
are intentional false clicks a weapon to fear?
The person doing the clicking should be the most afraid. More and more people are going to jail for cybercrime. Big G has both the capability and motivation to find malicious clickers and hand them over to the police.
The police would have no reason to do anything beyond letting them go.
Show me the contract Google has with everyone in the world NOT to intentionaly click Google Advertisments unless you want to buy something?
Now, if you are talking about clicking adds on your own website, then thats obviously in breach of your contract with google - but google has no contract with people clicking the adds.
My mother could go to google.com, search for something and click the same add 50000 times and can you tell me what law she's broken?
none.
however, they are obviously going to ignore anything beyond one click per IP per Advertisment every 24 hours or so arent they.
The clickers (if they were AdSense publishers) may not have been so lucky. Since people who use such juvenile tactics are likely to be less than brilliant, they probably leave tracks that are easy for Google to follow.
I can imagine the "click like crazy" tactic being effective under two circumstances:
1) When the site being attacked isn't likely to withstand a manual review (e.g., if it's a blatantly made-for-AdSense scraper site); or...
2) When the site being attacked generates little revenue for Google and is in a sector where click attacks and other pranks are a recurring problem (e.g., forums on topics that stir up hostile controversies or that attract large numbers of kids and adolescents).
Intentional false clicks of the type being discussed inflict financial damage. The combination of dishonest intent and economic loss brings the matter into the realm of criminal law in most if not all countries.
I don't think there is anything criminal that could be charged and the civil matter mentioned would be very difficult to prove and collect any damages. Prosecutors nor corporations would be willing to embark on such a futile effort to punish someone.
I don't think there is anything criminal that could be charged
Does this not come under, for example in the US, "Wire Fraud"? And, although the Federal Trade Commission haven't as yet wanted to tackle click fraudsters, isn't it only a matter of time before they take it up?
I agree that small scale stuff isn't going to motivate any large-scale action, and as EFV suggests Google's record to date is very benevolent towards advertiser victims. However, with stories of companies being set up, eg: in India, providing services in clicking adverts online, the problem is growing and will be tackled at some point.
But obviously such prosecutions are rare. Civil liability is more likely.
I think criminal charges could definitely be applied
I'm no lawyer but tortious interference of a business and fraud both spring to mind.
The question is, can I take out a competitor's site by clicking the heck out of their adds?
It is a very good question. Google claims "no". Anonymous posters who allege they've been banned for that very reason claim "yes". Neither party offers convincing proof. Indeed, either party may be honestly incorrect about their claim (e.g., Google may be convinced their data shows the clicks were via the fraudulent publisher when in fact they weren't -- in an HTTP world, that's just an impossible case to eliminate).
We may never have a clear answer. Google has only to not ban so many people that the issue becomes a crisis of confidence for signing up publishers. Alternatively, a competitor could make the issue a point of contention forcing more transparency. The latter is unlikely, however. Yahoo! and MSN show no signs of seriously competing for the small-time web publisher (unsurprisingly, since they both have their own content to hawk), which is where most of these was-I-banned-by-competitor-fraud issues tend to occur.
