Adbusters Suggests Click Fraud As Protest

An anonymous reader writes "In response to Google's recently announced plans to expand the tracking of users, the international anti-advertising magazine Adbusters proposes that we collectively embark on a civil disobedience campaign of intentional, automated 'click fraud' in order to undermine Google's advertising program in order to force Google to adopt a pro-privacy corporate policy. They have released a GreaseMonkey script that automatically clicks on all AdSense ads."

Comments

"Protest"?

[MrEricSir]

Won't this just make Google more money?

It's not like the advertisers can go somewhere else. If you want search ads, there's only one place to go.

Re:"Protest"?

[biocute]

Not really.

This only makes Google more money if Google keeps those false clicks and charges the advertisers, which will undermine its AdSense products.

And it will cost Google a lot of time and money to validate whether a click is fraud or not if enough people start doing it.

And you really should do it manually, randomly and intermittently, otherwise Google could just delete a bunch of clicks from the same IP address in short timeframe.

Re:"Protest"?

[QuoteMstr]

Nah, just a simple matter of Javascript to test if you have certain pieces of chrome installed relating to this script to determine if the clicks are fake. No Javascript, no ads for the plug-in to click on anyway. Then the plug-in is going to have to randomize where it stores its chrome evade detection.

Advertisers really don't want to get into this arms race. They're bound to lose. The browser has resources at its disposal that no web page can. If someone were so inclined, he could create a method of hiding ads that scripting running in a sandbox couldn't possibly detect. Image elements would seen normal; popup windows could be virtualized.

Oh, sure, advertisers will try to run timing attacks and such, but those can be faked as well. Ultimately, all the advertiser is doing is wasting resources he can better spend creating ads that people don't feel so strongly opposed to seeing.

Re:"Protest"?

[rainsford]

To put my last point a simpler way, I care about your profits exactly the same amount that you care about my privacy...whatever that amount might be.

Re:"Protest"?

[Idiomatick]

50% of my post is asking for ways to get youtube(google) to stop doing something evil.... yet you think its fud on google's behalf.... interesting.

Why not just block their ads?

[Xtravar]

Actually, I think I already have Google ads blocked...

Will false-positives hurt them more than just adblocking them?

Re:Why not just block their ads?

[geekoid]

"don't fraudulently click them."

what they hell does that mean? how can you fraudulently click something?

Re:Why not just block their ads?

[N1AK]

A quick look at the California law shows plenty of ambiguity.

With all due respect FatdogHaiku there is no ambiguity at all. Every one of those requires the act to be without permission. There is no way in hell they could argue that following a link publicly distributed as an advertisement could be seen as acting without permission.

Adblock?

[Hatta]

Isn't adblock enough? I hate advertising, but as long as I can opt out it's OK with me.

Re:Adblock?

[Tony Hoyle]

This *is* the free market. Problem (ads) appears, solution (adblock) is developed, and becomes popular.

Advertisers have no more right to force me to view their ads than coke has to force me to by fizzy drinks.

Re:Adblock?

[martin-boundary]

He's not freeloading. He's (presumably) paying for his net connection. That pays for all the bits that come through the wire to him, and he can do with the bits whatever he likes. That's how the net works.

Those "services" you refer to are being offered by companies of their own free will to web surfers. Kind of like those window washing "services" some people offer freely at busy intersections when the lights are red. That doesn't mean those services are worth anything and they don't need to be paid for unless somebody is feeling charitable.

The word "Privacy" is fraud here

[bluefoxlucid]

We're talking about tagging cookies to a browser, keeping data browser-end, and having the browser send data back to the server for statistics when ads are served.

Instead, we could skip the cookies. Keep the data on the server, in a database, tied to your IP address and other information collected about you (OS, browser, time of day, etc) and do much more extensive research.

When you clear your cookies, you're removed from Google's "Database" ... YOU are requesting THEM to send you ads based on information YOU are tracking using THEIR program. THEY are not tracking everything you do, because damn, it'd be hard to uniquely identify you when your cookies expire and drop your UUID stored in a cookie and they wind up with 40 database entries for your ONE browser because you clear cookies every session.

Its not that hard...

[nweaver]

A better bit would be a Firefox plugin (you can't do greasemonkey, it needs to be lower down) that just strips all references to google adwords, analytics, and doubleclick and replaces them with noops.

Now google can't track you and you don't see the adds.

While the "clickfraud" solution sounds cute, those are easy easy to detect and Google will just ignore those clicks.