Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Some snobby, rich kid who doesn't like you making money of your own came to your site and sent some feedback to adsense...
he writes "The webmaster asks me to click his ad links" and then leaves your site, to return once a day and send alaternative messages regarding you asking him to click your ads repeatingly with a new e-mail and from different cyber-cafes, school, college, uni, and work place, home computers.
Is your account at the mercy of this rich snobby guy who's jealous of your self-achieved content and money flowing web-site?
I'd like to know your input on the chances that this could happen to you, if it did, and is it likely google will believe a liar, and do you think google require evidence?
Do you think google through about this?
If anyone has reported a site for violation you may know it shows up a ticket in your e-mail inbox, what if he replied to these tickets with the message "the site still asks me to click his ads".... would that force google to close your adsense account?
A scary but possiblity is so high, it has to be effective and if it's not then reporting violations is useless concept in its entirety.
Do google need 100 reports before they warn/close you?
-[NoodleBox]
If anyone has reported a site for violation you may know it shows up a ticket in your e-mail inboxOh really, does it for real? And if so, will a nut case with a hard-on for a vendetta actually give their real email address in the first place?
what if he replied to these tickets with the message "the site still asks me to click his ads".... would that force google to close your adsense account?Is seeing believing, or would they take some nut case's word for it to "force them" to oust an otherwise productive publisher without seeing it for themselves or other adequate documentation?
Google would be very stupid as a business if they allow noise to take the place of real data and facts, so far they are proving by numbers to be one of the smartest businesses out there, so don't worry about them being stupid.
As for someone having it in for you, that's another matter, given enough will and knowledge, anyone can make anyone's life miserable, has nothing to do with Google or even online business, the trick is to keep your nose clean, and make sure you never hurt anyone enough to warrant revenge, common decency really. (And the kid's being rich has nothing to do with it, so get that one out of your head)
And OFFline, don't get my imagination started. What if someone took it into his head to sue you into bankruptcy or burn your house down? Big problem.
The one thing I can say to help you sleep better is that it's in no one's interest to get you kicked out of AdSense. It's not going to make your site go away, and even a direct competitor would likely only benefit microscopically from the effect on the supply/demand curve.
I'd like to know your input on the chances that this could happen to you, if it did, and is it likely google will believe a liar, and do you think google require evidence?Do you think google through about this?
Only G knows for sure. But as you have identified some risks, is the potential reward of AdSense worth these risks? Only you can decide this.
If we report something suspected as foul play, there are live human beings to write to who don't mean us any harm at all and want to do the best job they possibly can.
I consider myself a hard-boiled cynic, but maybe I'm more trusting than I think. It can never hurt to expect the best from people, unless there's some substantial reason not to. And Google is not some big anonymous *IT* - it's a collection of actual people who happen to work there, most of whom we can assume want to do the best job they can, like most of us do.
Communicate - and trust, until there's good reason not to.
people just like us who happen to have gotten a job with a company that has a great employee cafeteria and fringe benefits - not to mention style and atmosphere
detecting some envy there maybe? ;-)
Now where do I send that CV?
the trick is to keep your nose clean, and make sure you never hurt anyone enough to warrant revenge, common decency really.
Yes and No to that.
Yes, you do your best to safeguard your interests and be a good soul, but NO... it might not be a rich a**hole kid after you but your best friend/wife/husband/colleague. Who can tell when life decides to throw you a curve ball...
If I suspected anything suspicious...
Sorry, that made me laugh.
Back to the main topic, I wouldn't worry about it. #1 rule of life is not to worry about what you can't change. Just make sure not to have any enemies who know about your websites. It'd have to be a real lifeless person to continuously harass a random website for absolutely no gain. Rule #2 of life is not to tell anyone about your sites. Don't even use your real name in them. If you do well, there's always jealous #*$!s who don't do well themselves looking for ways to get you even with them.
But I think you will come out okay under these criteria:
1. You have built up sufficient 'experience' that the behaviour appears to be an anomoly. If your site is brand new and suspicious things happen, Google will likely respond with greater caution.
2. You are aware of the types of irregularities that can occur, and can quickly figure out the 'real' problem.
3 You communicate with google proactively as soon as you notice anything out of order and maintain close communication throughout the ordeal experience with them.
As an example, some bad guys set up a 'joe job' on my business last December. I knew what was happening, and communicated rapidly with my ISP, google, and others who would be affected. Google responded courteously, and my ISP did not pull my account despite being flooded with complaints on Christmas Day.
I consider myself a hard-boiled cynic, but maybe I'm more trusting than I think. It can never hurt to expect the best from people, unless there's some substantial reason not to. And Google is not some big anonymous *IT* - it's a collection of actual people who happen to work there, most of whom we can assume want to do the best job they can, like most of us do.
This isn't so much a criticism of (rank and file) individuals as it is of corporate policy.
[edited by: noodlebox at 6:54 pm (utc) on Dec. 7, 2006]
1. He ran a site
- roughly 200k page view day making about 150-200$ day and part of the program for 11 months... and always had his payments from google, not one warning mssage, not one single problem and even recieved emails about optimisation tips etc.
2. some jealous guy talked to him about site
- he thought it was a bit personal asking him questions about how much he earnt and tried to ignore him.
3. jealous guy added someone in the convo who said they are attacking the ads on his site
- obviously the jealous guy is part of this because this wasn't such a problem before he came along
4. the attacker said "im running bot on your ads"
- jealous guy pretends to be a victim here too and says don't it's not nice please stop, but really he is laughing
5. adsense account had accumilated over 10,000 clicks in hours.
- friend was really upset and had to e-mail google asap.
6. friend messaged Adsense.
- and copied the internet chat log of the attacker with the attacker email address.
7. friend's account 9 hours later "account suspended"
- depression set in for friend, and e-mailed adsense back
8. friend received e-mail hour later "you are banned"
- this wasn't great news and nothing new either!
9. friend tried to explain situation many times
- adsense ignored saying it protects its advertisers more.
10. the end.
Moral of the story? it happens and if you report it , you go down with it.. maybe he should of kept the clicks to himself but he did the right thing and got kicked out.
You have a problem that strangely mimics a recent post by mygen, but the details seem unclear. Then you post a "hypothetical" within 2 days, and then you change it tow a "real" case.
It's been known for a long time that other parties can get you banned by click bombing you. which your "real" case covered. But why did your hypothetical case go off on this letter writing tangent instead of covering the "facts" of click bombing.
I've got to say that there is something that is starting to smell fishy about your posts. In fact, it seems sort of like your hypothetical cases where someone is in a posting vendetta.
If your examples are real, then I apologize. But I think you are developing a bit of a credibility gap.
By the way, when your friend noticed all those clicks, why didn't he pull his ads?
I just wanted to see what people thought first. before I unrevealed what I've learnt in the process of being at google, friends get owned and I think I've had about 10 friends get click fraud attack / got owned for something or other.
of course I am sure I havn't broke the TOS but ever thought if you hate on someone say a competitor it could hit you back in the face, KARMA of adsense.
or a jealous friend lost his adsense and thought, "if i cant have adsense you can't" this evil side of someone can come out at the worst times of their lives.. especialy if they were on big money and know you are now making hundreds dollars day vs their account suspended.
Moral of the story? it happens and if you report it, you go down with it
And you have 10 friends who have all been victims of click attacks? I agree with BigDave that your stories are becoming less and less credible. Either you're leaving out some important pieces of information (e.g. your friends are all hackers and/or AdSense scammers), or you're making them up altogether.
It had OCR to read the captcha, a reader to parse the "are you 13 or older" got my ever changing barrier, got around the "bot trap", even used zombie emails to vaidate his bot's regestration. All to put stupid little porno links in my boards. I finally found a captcha that stopped him (for now) but for the last two months it seems getting into my board was his life's calling...
Some scum can really be very determined, psychotically obsessed it seems. Even had a few target my guestbook, which is modern with many protections in place, but still the effort on his part continues.
If anyone has reported a site for violation you may know it shows up a ticket in your e-mail inbox, what if he replied to these tickets with the message "the site still asks me to click his ads".... would that force google to close your adsense account?Keep trying it and let us know how it works for you.
That was the point i was raising, how can you top a phycotic lunitic taking your adsense away... and if it does happen, would google really know (since they run bots for emails no real people).
That was the point i was raising, how can you top a phycotic lunitic taking your adsense away
But a more interesting point is: what is the risk of this happening, and can I do anything about it?
We don't know the risk of this happening, but we can estimate some bounds. How big a percentage of AdSense publishers could be banned before every webmaster outlet everywhere was flooded with unwarranted banning stories? I claim that because Google has a very large number of publishers, it could not sustain a very big percentage of "banned by a bozo" incidents. Surely, if it became 10% (and uniformly distributed), every other thread in this forum would be an outraged missive from a banned publisher.
So, I claim you can figure that AdSense publishers have at least a 90% chance of not getting banned by a bozo (99.9% is probably more likely, but surely it's got to be at least 90%). A 90% chance of not getting banned is probably not going to scare many folks away from AdSense.
Can you do anything about the risk? Clearly there are a few things. Make sure you can yank all ads at a moments notice. Put in place automated checks for suspicious activity. Yank'em and contact Google if you see something alarming.
Finally, is it reasonable that somebody knows "10" people who've been banned? Not statistically likely, but sure, it's possible. Consider 10 folks who are in AdSense to make a quick buck, competing with each other, and have no particular sense of honor or ethics. Yeah, a 10-way shoot-out into oblivion is not beyond the realm of my imagination!
And 10 people sure, I'm always having some webmaster tell me about their google adsense being banned for no reason and how to go about it ... maybe you're not interested as much am I about innocent bannings but it does make me worry when it happens and how it happened to them... and if they'll start playing on my adsense out of jealousy...
And 10 people sure, I'm always having some webmaster tell me about their google adsense being banned for no reason
Did Google give them a reason?
and how to go about it ... maybe you're not interested as much am I about innocent bannings but it does make me worry when it happens and how it happened to them... and if they'll start playing on my adsense out of jealousy...
Don't tell your "friends" what websites you operate.
