[AlextheWise1]

wow i think id expect more like 15% real clicks

[claptrap]

Internet business like most store front business is
plagued with dishonesty and con games. Most producers
of products fail to stand behind their products.

[ChadGore]

Google is the biggest over valuation in American history.

[hedgetrimmer]

How do you commit 'click fraud'?

[Nachoman]

I got to get my eyes checked. I thought that read bogus chicks. I was expecting a story on Russian mail-order brides.

[expatpat]

They need to charge for converted visits to the website.

[weegee]

Smoke and mirrors and an unethical industry.

Reminds me of newspaper circulation figures and Hollywood's creative accounting.

But legislators have never done much to prevent the sale of your private information between these commercial interests. So now we are faced with rampent spam, identity theft, and fraud. The barn door is still open.

[G. Stolyarov II]

It seems that Google and Yahoo! are on the defensive in a standard cycle of offensive/defensive buildup. There is a system with a potential to be abused and exploited. The abusers and exploiters devise an ingenious way to carry out fraud. Those who run the system need to raise their defenses to counter the current fraud-- but the fraudsters eventually manage to outmaneuver the defenses and create a new scheme. This is somewhat analogous to the historical defense/offense escalation in the military realm. The moment someone builds a new fortress or defense system impregnable to old attacks, somebody else will try to find a way to breach the new defense system.

I am
G. Stolyarov II
http://www.panasianbiz.com
http://www.thebizofknowledge.com
http://www.risingsunofnihon.com
http://www.zhonghuarising.com
http://rationalargumentator.com

[sully777]

Is this the same thing as ad pimping?

I've seen non-profit churches claim their message/outreach is going out to the world based on the number of hits on their sites. And since they are non-profit (their supposed community outreach services have no profit/loss/etc) the number of hits supposedly show "effectiveness" which drives their donation base.

[giotto]

Most often, Web site owners repeatedly click the ads on their own sites to generate money for themselves. In other cases, advertisers target the ads of their rivals to drain their marketing budgets.

I would think that in most cases this would generate only one click per user. At least this is how Yahoo does it. Unless the fraudsters are killing their cookies and then clicking again, I don't see how a single user could rack up multiple clicks.