Man Accused of Attempting to Extort Google

sandalwood writes "A programmer has been arrested on charges of attempting to "threaten Google with a software program he devised that creates phony clicks on pop-up advertisements delivered by Google. Google pays Web site publishers companies a certain amount for legitimate hits on those ads, but Bradley created a method that generates false clicks that appeared to be real Internet traffic, which would have repeatedly defrauded Google... Bradley contacted Google in early March, informing company officials that he had created the program and wanted $100,000 to keep him from selling it to spammers, according to an affidavit by a U.S. Secret Service agent." A harbinger of organized crime to come? That's a real nice website you have here... a shame if anything were to happen to it..."

Comments

What have we learned?

[g0bshiTe]

Next time don't go to those you are trying to extort. Just go straight to the competition. I'm sure the spammers would have paid him much more than $100,000 collectively and not turned him in.

Imagine, he could have licensed his software to the spammers and charged them an annual fee to use it. He could have been the "Microsoft" of the spamming industry.

Re:Or vice versa

[Dun Malg]

um... guys, maybe I'm out of line here, but this is not a good topic to brain storm. Why do we want to devises more deviant ways to spam? And why hurt our precious Google!

Pretending no one thought of it is not an effective way to prevent others from thinking of it. We want all possible exploits to be exposed, so they can be dealt with. You're advocating security through obscurity.