Slashdot Mirror
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..."
I wonder how long he had to Google before he figured out the technical details of how to do that? ;-)
;-)
Search terms: "how to extort" AND money AND "from google"
You can find articles about the fellow by looking at the top Google hits for "moron," "fucktard," and "what the hell were you thinking?"
Next time, just go straight to the spammers.
That's a real nice website you have here... a shame if anything were to happen to it...
Isn't this what Slashdot is trying to do? No?
Martin
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.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
...a new revenue stream.
Hi little guy, this is Cmdr.Taco... We're going to link to your site in an article. What? You say you can't handle the traffic? For the low low cost of $699 we can grant you a license to mirror your site on our finely tuned slashdot-proof servers.
This guy tried to extort the search engine that allows you to find almost anything including almost anybody and he was expecting to not get caught?
Stupid!
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
I figured out and wrote a perl script to increase my karma. Give me $1200 worth of ThinkGeek stuff, or I'll post it in the forums!!!!
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
A series of funny quotes come to mind: 'You want I should break your links?' 'Mario, I need you to 404 this site.' 'I will ping flood you so fast, you wont know what hit you.' 'I host your site. You've never google me. You dont visit my page. And now you want me to bring down this site. What am I supposed to think?' 'Johhny, I swear, I'll get you your page hits. I just need some more time.'
The flying hamster of DOOM rains coconuts on your pitiful city.
Spammers, on the other hand, have now moved onto blogs lately. Fred Rodriguez, a rider Emeryville, CA, for italian team Aqua e Sapone has spams for the usual penis enlargment, diet pills, cheap computer eqz, etc. on his guest book. Spammers got no shame, just like this fool.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
He was very easy to track down. Apparently, a red flag gets raised at Google whenever anyone actually clicks on those ads. So, they eliminated the guy who needed ink jet cartridges and sent the police in.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
Anyone remember the company AllAdvantage (was that really the name?) that paid users to click on ads during the dotcom boom? I remember almost everyone was into it ... people were making hundreds, even thousands of dollers per month.
... set it up to run all night, go to sleep, wake up rich in the morning. That's probably why the thing was so popular!
... the idea being that if the mouse wasn't moving, but clicks were coming in, then it was a cheat.
Of course, none of the ad traffic was legitimate! There were tons and tons of scripts and programs that would click the ads for you
I remember the comany would implement anti-cheat methods every couple of weeks, even to the point of tracking mouse movements
Ok, well... as always, cheaters take things to the next level. The ultimate cheat was one that surfed the web from a pre-determined list of web sites, while randomly moving the mouse cursor around the screen, and clicking every couple of seconds. Worked like a charm!
No more AllAdvantage.
Google has more sophisticated technology than AllAdvantage though... its almost impossible to cheat google. Even if this dumb-ass really did write a program to click ads on his own sites, google would catch that. There's AdSense partners getting canned every day for suspicion of cheating, when sometimes it's only as simple as an innocent erroneous click on their own ads. It happens... check the adsense forums. I doubt this guy would have been able to execute much of his plan successfully.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
this never would've happened if they didn't offer google in "hacker"
and if you see me strut, remind me of what left this outlaw torn...
Actually no, click fraud is a real problem with Google (and all other pay per click engines). There have been many times when my Adwords traffic has spiked, sales have plummeted and conversions gone through the floor, and I am 99% sure that it is click fraud - the logs are just FULL of proxies, and Google seems helpless to do anything about it, but still happily collects the money.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ironically, while that exact search does actually come up with 0 results, there are 5 'sponsored links' offering 'Secrets behind AdWords', 'Create AdWords Cash' and so on...
That's why the article mentions spammers. The (old) trick works by sending out spam that generates a click-through when someone opens the email. (Or previews it in LookOut.) That way it comes from a whole bunch of IP addresses of people dumb enough to allow HTML script to run in their email.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Google dosen't just have text link adds on Googles website. They also have ads on OTHER peoples websites and pay those websites for that.
With out banner adds or pop ups (Thwap the guy who called Google ads POP UPS) you'll need some software on your server to make this work.
Im guessing this guy hacked this software so he can send bad any data he wants and is expecting Google to act like Microsoft and pay to keep it quiet.
He picked the wrong target. Find a defect in Windows.. a nasty one.. and bribe Microsoft to stay quiet. They appear all fine with the extrotion scams and all about security by obscurity.
(I'm joking BTW.. Try that and Microsoft will thump you something nasty AND clame your defect is fraudulent)
I don't actually exist.
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.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.