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Google's Click-Fraud Crackdown

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the fighting-back dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Wired reports that Google is making some effort to put a crack in the practice of click-fraud. Because of the pernicious abuse of the company's advertising business, it simply can't be sure that anyone is actually looking at the ads. Bruce Schneier talks about the problems of ensuring that people are really people, and Google's solution." From the article: "Google is testing a new advertising model to deal with click fraud: cost-per-action ads. Advertisers don't pay unless the customer performs a certain action: buys a product, fills out a survey, whatever. It's a hard model to make work — Google would become more of a partner in the final sale instead of an indifferent displayer of advertising — but it's the right security response to click fraud: Change the rules of the game so that click fraud doesn't matter."

2 of 201 comments (clear)

  1. Doesn't solve the wider problem by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 2, Funny

    This approach may or may not solve click fraud, but it certainly doesn't solve the wider problem of proving that it's a human performing some action instead of a computer - and that one definitely needs to be nailed.

    There seem to be at least two alternatives - you could use a chain-of-trust type model such as TCPA to be able to remotely prove that [a] this packet is coming from [b] this program that is [c] digitally signed by this party who [d] asserts that it only accepts input from humans when run on [e] an operating system that will ignore [f] debuggers and [g] un-approved input devices. But this seems unworkable and contrary to the spirit of open computing.

    A better solution might be some kind of fingerprint reader that generates digitally signed "proof of life" which can be demanded by remote sites. For instance if you want to post a blog comment you have to touch your finger against the reader which is now 'charged' with 10 proofs - enough that a legit user probably won't be bothered again for some time, but not enough to make automatic spamming profitable.

    I don't know of anybody developing such a thing though.

  2. Maybe a convenient push for GooglePay? by grolschie · · Score: 3, Funny

    1. Pursuade existing Google advertisers to use GooglePay so transactions can be monitored and click-fraud prevented.
    2. ???
    3. Profit!