Bahama Botnet Stealing Traffic From Google

itwbennett writes "'As part of its design, the Bahama botnet not only turns ordinary, legitimate PCs into click-fraud perpetrators that dilute the effectiveness of ad campaigns. It also modifies the way these PCs locate certain Web sites through DNS poisoning,' explains Juan Carlos Perez in an ITworld article. 'In the case of Google.com, compromised machines take their users to a fake page hosted in Canada that looks just like the real Google page and even returns results for queries entered into its search box. It's not clear where the Canadian server gets these results. What is evident is that the results aren't 'organic' direct links to their destinations, but are instead masked cost-per-click (CPC) ads that get routed through other ad networks or parked domains, some of which are in on the scam and some of which aren't.' 'Regardless, CPC fees are generated, advertisers pay, and click fraud has occurred,' Click Forensics reported on Thursday in a blog posting." Related: Techcrunch reports on a massive Chinese click-fraud ring controlling 200,000 IP addresses.

Comments

Yay Click Fraud

[rwv]

Because having retailers pay for ads that will never generate sales is the only way to make them realize that it's not worth it to advertise in the first place.

As an aside, I'm looking forward to the new US blog rules that go into effect in a month that state bloggers need to say if they are getting paid to promote a product.

Re:Yay Click Fraud

[iYk6]

That's one potential outcome. I think it is more likely that advertising will just be worth less, and so ad based web sites will make less money per advertisement, and will need to show more advertisements to stay in business.

Fraud has been going on for a long time. This isn't new, and isn't going to change anything.

Re:Yay Click Fraud

[rwv]

Rather, ads are used to build your reputation and increase familiarity.

I would agree to this, except for the fact that there are so many advertisers who use obnoxious flash ads that distract and dance on the screen. These monstrosities don't make any attempt to build reputation.

Also, the other day I saw an "Amazon" ad for a cordless drill (a product that I'm in the market for). They were advertising a sale for a product that I actually wanted and it came up either by luck or because they used cookies to figure me out. Either way... no click because they used an hidden/embedded flash link and so there is zero trust from me that the ad was actually going to take me to Amazon.

I think the whole industry is fucked, and while I admit it's wishful thinking to hope that advertising goes away... I know that they'll be around for a long, long time.

Re:Are clicks still being sold?

[bjourne]

Tracking users via cookies. When a user clicks an ad, it sets a cookie in that users browser. Then when that users makes a purchase/signs up, it can be shown that there is a direct link between the ad and the sale so the advertiser gets payed. That is how most serious ad networks operate these days.

Re:Are clicks still being sold?

[cbiltcliffe]

So then people like me, who deny all cookies from advertising networks, are then committing click-fraud by not allowing the ad to be traced?

It doesn't matter how you do it; if it's on the Internet, there will be an edge case of some type that doesn't fit, and breaks your model. Whether it's criminal click-fraudsters, paranoid anti-cookie loons, or some guy who's surfing on their friend's computer. They click an ad, their friend makes a purchase a week later, and the advertiser gets paid for......what, exactly?