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Smartphone Apps Fraudulently Collecting Revenue From Invisible Ads
JoeyRox writes: Thousands of mobile applications are downloading ads that are never presented to users but which collected an estimated $850 million in fraudulent revenue from advertisers per year. The downloading of these invisible ads can slow down users' phones and consume up to 2GB of bandwidth per day. Forensiq, an online technology firm fighting fraud for advertisers, found over 5,000 apps displayed unseen ads on both Apple and Android devices. "The sheer amount of activity generated by apps with fake ads was what initially exposed the scam. Forensiq noticed that some apps were calling up ads at such a high frequency that the intended audience couldn't possibly be actual humans."
Nope. Using this hosts file: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1916098
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
I've had a very good experience with this one. I'm accustomed to it now, so using someone else's computer without it (or similar) feels like swimming in a shark-infested pool with turds floating in front of my face.
Keep it up, keep ripping off advertisers, drive the value of advertising on our phones down to zero. Eventually nobody will be making money and we can relive the golden age of computers on our smartphones, an age dominated by passionate hobbyists and shareware authors.
I keep thinking that we are going to see Google collapse in on itself when people realize that every dollar spent on internet ads leads to less than a dollar worth of increased sales. But Google is smart enough to not be dependent upon ad revenue, but acts as "the house" where they play odds on both the ad buyers and the ad sellers and make sure the house always gets its percentage. In order for Google to go under, a large number of online businesses would have to realize that online advertising is worthless, and lucky for Google a sucker is born every minute.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
What if they just steal the ad revenue and pretend to send the ad? If it's invisible it does no good to send it at all. Even in matters of fraud, please no half measures. We could even have a service where a host out the cloud takes your place and receives ads and even pretends to click links and thus pretends to be you for all advertising purposes, yet your phone or PC never has to receive the data at all. The advertising profile could be attached to a pseudonym, so it doesn't compromise your privacy or security. Your favorite websites get paid, advertisers get righteously fucked and the villagers rejoice.