Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Well, I recently reported a case of click fraud and it got terminated within days. I suspect G places a much higher priority on click fraud.
The guy was very bold going onto a forum saying how easy it was to steal from G and how he goes to school to click ads also telling his friends to click. Then i look at his profile and... low and behold... he is dumb enough to put his website in his profile...
It's funny, you get a sense of satisfaction when you see someone defrauding the system get caught.
At the very least an investigation would have to confirm that the email address used to open the forum account, where the fraud was detailed, was the same email address the person who set up the fraud ridden AdSense account. Did you do that? Do you think a forum operator would cooperate? When and why? For good reason or bad? What if the forum operator was delivering some form of payback to a member that caused trouble in the past?
The anonymous would of forums, email, etc. is rife with fraud, including spiteful types of fraud, destructive forms of fraud, etc: The type of fraud where one pretends that they are person X and then go about saying things that would put person X in a bad light. Not all fraud is about taking money directly. There is and will be indirect fraud - like DDOS attacks - used to take down a competitors site. There is Adwords click fraud that wipes out a competitor's account. There is Adwords impression fraud, used to drive down a competitors ad placement.
I can only hope that if the scenario you posted is accurate that Google went into great detail in determining that they got the real cuprit in their gunsite before shooting. For example, the IP address of the poster matched up to the IP address of the AdSense account holder, etc.
I see all manner of trouble for AdSense and its publishers/advertisers so long as a "take all comers" approach is employed (without building any form of background check, etc.) and associated problems with not binding AdSense accounts and related ad distribution to specifically submitted domain lists, etc.
IPs are somewhat meaningless in our DHCP world, something has to be tied directly to your machine like a MAC address.
adsensenoob, Good job reporting, let's assume Google checked before shutting them down.
"As an adsense publisher I am concerned about the integrity of the program. I have identified a POSSIBLE case of click fraud identified at #*$!. From the profile on that forum, the website is #*$!. Please investigate."
If you see something wrong with this that is up to you. I will continue to report possible cases of fraud.
edit: bill, thanks. I will continue. G probably checked because I got a reply within a day after I sent the notice. Basically the response was (human response) that they were going to forward the information to investigation team. A few days after that, I noticed the ads on that site were disabled.
I can only hope that if the scenario you posted is accurate that Google went into great detail in determining that they got the real cuprit in their gunsite before shooting.
It's totally up to Google and in their best interest to investigate the situation.
I think he definitely did the right thing.
Webwork, why would you even assume or hint that Google would just take a random person's word at face value with no investigation of their own?
Webwork, why would you even assume or hint that Google would just take a random person's word at face value with no investigation of their own?
Rodney, I assume good faith in my dealing with most established business people, with a few execptions such as used car dealers ;0). However, I don't assume anything about another business's undisclosed methodology.
Since Google doesn't disclose their methodology I can only hope that they've already thought through the issues of "false light fraud" in multiple dimensions. If not then the "hints" I'm tossing out are here for AdSense's digestion and consideration. They're not for impugning AdSense in the least. I guess I could be more obvious in my motivations and concern, and said "Here's how I would do it", but then I'd be criticized for what?
Rodney, I'd ask in return: Why on earth would you even hint that my animus is negative or hostile? Just because I posed questions? There are cultures, organizations or nations where asking questions is dangerous or frowned upon - deemed a hostile act - but not here, hopefully. Don't tell me I'm supposed to operate from the assumption that Google has thought about everything. I'm going to operate from the assumption that Google, more than once, has benefited from the input of someone on the outside.
I think AdSense is a wonderful opportunity. My only interest is in seeing it work successfully and fairly for all people, including advertisers and publishers. I think I made that point rather plainly when I initiated threads about the AdSense threads focus on publisher profits versus advertiser ROI and my thread about protecting publishers by being very circumspact when it comes to advising publishers about the TOS.
So please, don't hint that my animus is adverse or hostile, or that I underestimate their competence. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Rodney, I'd ask in return: Why on earth would you even hint that my animus is negative or hostile?
I hinted at it because that was the tone I got from the message. If I was incorrect in reading your tone, I apologize.
However, the volume and shortness of your questions:
Did you do that? Do you think a forum operator would cooperate? When and why? For good reason or bad? What if the forum operator was delivering some form of payback to a member that caused trouble in the past?
Sounded less like you actually wanted answers to the questions, and more like you were "cross-examining" a witness.
Usually when people (especially experienced forum veterans like yourself) ask questions in a forum, they ask one at a time in a more orderly manner, and follow up with more questions when they have answers to the questions they have asked initially.
As I said in another post recently I am working on behaving a little less lawyerly, but it ain't easy. Sorry if I offended.
I won't behavior lawyerly ever again. ;0)
Ummmm, well, I'll keep trying and apologizing and trying not to bring my work home with me, or to WW.
Just ask my two teenagers.
"So, where are you going and who will be there? What's the address? I don't know these kids. Where do they go to school? Will the parents be home? How do you know? Can I have their phone number? What time will you be getting home? Who's driving? Tell me something about the parents? What will you be doing?"
...For example, the IP address of the poster matched up to the IP address of the AdSense account holder, etc.
But how would G know the IP address of the poster since only the forum owner would appear to have that information, and it would be unlikely they would reveal that information.
Sorry if I offended
No offense taken, whatsoever :)
I was just responding to your questions with more questions of my own and clarifying why I responded the way I did :)
it might be case that genuine publisher has opted to remove the ads after looking at increase no of invalid clicks.......just guess work
Anyone could secure a forum account, make a post about "do this bad thing and make money", and put an AdSense publisher's URL in t forum profile. How do you know "who done it" without more information?
What about this scenario: Someone reports a site "with problems". Google doesn't act. That same reporting someone creates an account at a forum, uses the URL of the offending site, and then posts all manner of "encouragement to fraud". Next, the reporting someone, perhaps using a new email account, reports the same site but adds "this site operator is encouraging others to commit fraud".
If you were AdSense and received such an email what would you do? Put it at the bottom of the list, this email about some publisher posting "New and better ways to defraud AdSense"?
All I'm doing to imagining how it could be possible - in the anonymous wild west of the web - that a hostile (or even somewhat well motivated) person could stage an attack on another person's standing with AdSense. I see all manner of vile, fraudulent, ill motivated behavior on the web: DDOS/bot attacks, phishing, identity theft, hacking/cracking, etc.
Is it at all unlikely that an unscrupulous competitor of WebsiteX could attempt to put a hurt on it by working on a "false light attack"? It's not unthinkable. Heck, in the ecommerce threads here at WW there are discussions of banning entire country blocks of IP addresses due to rampant fraud.
Merely having one's site associated with "evil advice" threads in a forum would not be enough, absent compelling proof that the posts were - in fact - the work of the publisher, not some pretender.
Just food for thought.
Sometimes my hope for this world is a bit . . . challenged. I was recently the victim of a rip-off so perhaps I'm a bit sensitive to, or angry about, the issue of identity theft, false light or false representation of identify, etc.
Okay. I'll get it off my chest right now and move on. Here goes: Bad world! Bad, bad, world! Don't do that again! Ya, fer shure, all is better now. ;0)
Chances may be high that the person who posted on this board wasn't the site owner but a rival or mad ex-friend of the real site owner.
Most site owners aren't so stupid to post on a forum that they commit fraud. But we don't know a lot about the poster. It could be a 13-year old kid that didn't thought far enough to figure out that by posting something like that on Webmasterworld he might get banned. But it could also be a friend of him who wanted to do him harm..
Google might now be able to detect this. You send an e-mail and they check out his account and discover fraudulent clicks. But who says that the website owner caused these fraudulent clicks? They might be caused by the same 'mad ex-friend' who might have posted a message on this forum.
I think the Google Adsense program needs some additional tools to prevent fraud For instance allowing publishers to specify on which domains they have posted their Adsense ads. Any site not listed in your Adsense account shouldn't be counted. For the moment just about every malicious person could use your ads on their site - and what if that causes a ban for you? Google might not even know that the site didn't belong to you.
It's funny, you get a sense of satisfaction when you see someone defrauding the system get caught.
You probably should have just minded your own business in my opinion. Going around trying to get other people in trouble means you have poor class, and notifying Google is simply kissing up.
You probably should have just minded your own business in my opinion. Going around trying to get other people in trouble means you have poor class, and notifying Google is simply kissing up.
I find your comments offensive as a user of both an AdWords and AdSense.
adsensenoob was being a good AdSense citizen and being part of the click fraud solution and not part of the problem. He didn't get other people in trouble, they openly admitted it, he just reported it like a good citizen would and it appears Google confirmed it!
Based on your comments I assume you would let it slide so we all suffer when AdSense collapses from click fraud so THANK GOD for people like adsensenoob!
I have reported many sites for Google to investigate. They always thank me for my emails.
BTW, to the person who asked if the webmaster removed the code. NO, the adsense code is still on the page but no ads show up, nor do any PSA showup. Also, there is no alternate url specified either. I would assume that the account had been disabled.
You probably should have just minded your own business in my opinion. Going around trying to get other people in trouble means you have poor class, and notifying Google is simply kissing up.
Personally, I think that G should invest in a bot to do a google search to find these "please click on the ads to support my site" sites, and investigate. It's not up to us to police the system.
However, I do commend those that report blatant abuses, and I can quite see why there is a satisfaction factor involved here.
We don't know how the Adsense team judged. It could be that they thought: "mm a forum post and a bunch of clicks coming from the same IP, oh well seems like fraud, we'll ban him..". We simple don't now whether Google thoroughly investigates this or not. I hope that they do check out a lot of things, like if the whois information of the website on which the fraud happened is the same as your account details. I wouldn't want to be kicked out because a competitor wants to bug me.
I agree that abusers of the Adsense program need to get kicked out, but I can imagine that it's sometimes very hard to judge whether a user commited fraudulent activities or not. It's hard to decide whether the user caused fraud or whether it were someone else.
If someone posted a text on the website begging users to click on his ads than it is a clear violation. But I do hope that Google thoroughly investigates fraud cases..
What if a competitor of you would copy your Adsense code into a crappy website of him, put a text like "please click here to support this website" and then creates a topic on Webmasterworld to convince users that fraud is good and that it earned him hundreds of dollars. Maybe two days later you would be wondering why your Adense account was banned.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't report fraud but be careful. You might take away the income of an innocent webmaster.
However when it is on a third party site, especially a forum, I become apprehensive. You never really know who posted it there and for what reason.
Perhaps a good alterative to these third party situations is to send the following anonymous email to the site owner.
"I recently visited a forum that had a post stating to visit your site and click the ads. Are you aware of this and do you realise it is a violation of Google TOS."
you have poor class, and notifying Google is simply kissing up
Attacking people or "voting" about another person's statement does little to advance the intelligence of the WW community and, if there's any intelligence to your expression of an opposing point of view, it is usually lost or more than offset by the negative effects that name calling, etc. has on dialogue, etc. If someone expresses an inherently bad idea chances are good that we'll all get it without anyone having to "point it out".
Please don't attack or vote. We're here to enlighten, educate and assist. Demeaning or disparaging another member is about as far from educating as any other form of beating that has ever been applied - supposedly - for the purpose of education or persuasion.
Do not beat up on other members in any fashion. (Unless you're at a PubConf. Then it's okay to gang up on other members, so long as you're all buying each other beers, and doing it in proper jest.) ;0)
Based on your comments I assume you would let it slide so we all suffer when AdSense collapses from click fraud so THANK GOD for people like adsensenoob!
I think click fraud is horrible. However, at a public forum, I would not take anyones word. Everyone is innocent unless proven guilty, and there was really no proof (unless he checked out the site and the site said "click me")
incrediBILL, based on what the user said on this forum we don't know whether the site owner deserved to get kicked out or not. It's possible that he were a foolish person to brag about his fraudulent activities but he could also be a victim of a malicious users who wanted to kick him out of the Adsense program.
I agree with you that *WE* don't know, but considering the amount of sites we know are kicked out for fraudulent activity (read WW) the fact that one of them was stupid enough to brag about it doesn't surprise me at all.
I'm sure if the clicks didn't look suspicious Google wouldn't have done anything to the account. Hoever, in this day of hysteria over click fraud it sounds like a simple case of the no-so-bright abuser boasted, good samaritan turned it in, large bloated corporation swatted them like a bug.
Attacking people or "voting" about another person's statement does little to advance the intelligence of the WW community
Your right, I should have chosen my words better. I just always like to look at both sides of the story before jumping to conclusions, and I hate to see innocent people take a beating. What may look like the right thing to do sometimes its better to leave things alone. You wouldn't want someone to meddle into your affairs especially if you are an innocent webmaster.
However, I do feel it *is* my job to report suspicious activity. As an adsense publisher, I would not want the program hurt by fraudulent activity because it will end up hurting both adwords and adsense (and indirectly it will hurt me).
Again, I did not make the decision of guilt or innocence. I merely reported suspicious activity and G made the decision.
As for the kissing ass comment... I don't see how reporting possible fraud cases is me "kissing ass"
However, I do feel it *is* my job to report suspicious activity. As an adsense publisher, I would not want the program hurt by fraudulent activity because it will end up hurting both adwords and adsense (and indirectly it will hurt me).
But it's also down to Google to do the research. If I can find shedloads of violators by Googling for "click on the ads" + google, then so can Google, and it's primarily down to them to hunt out fraudsters and deal with them.
Google love bots, and I'm sure they could knock up one that did this search in the space of an idle lunchtime. In fact, I would assume that they do indeed have that technology. If they have the human resources to deal with the findings or not is another question.
I'm guessing that there are bigger fraudsters they concentrate time and resources on than some of the cruddy, bloggy sites that want visitors to click their ads. Maybe concentrating their resources in this way they protect the program better, but it would be nice to see more resources going into nailing minor offenders - of which there are many!
Just look at the sites Google is approving for adsense, and ask yourself if Google is in this for the long haul, or the quick buck.
