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Defrauding ad networks doesn't seem like a bad thing, although using my internet connection as a proxy is obviously terrible. It wouldn't surprise me to learn t
by glitchc 2mo ago
Defrauding ad networks doesn't seem like a bad thing, although using my internet connection as a proxy is obviously terrible. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that my connection is being sold as a VPN service by the vendor.
- alistairSH 2mo agoIt'll be a marginal effect, but fake clicks impacts the ad buyer, which then impacts their financials and pricing. The only winner here is the scammers running the fake affiliate sites on which these sticks are "clicking". Or, am I missing some facet of this enterprise?
- ssl-3 2mo agoAnother winner is the person who gets to watch cheap digital TV, without putting together a usable antenna and limiting their reception to the broadcast channels that are nearby. I mean: They just pay the money, plug the thing in, push some buttons, and: TV happens. Right?
- snickerbockers 2mo agoTheres the question of whether or not the fraudulent advertisement clicking is using enough traffic to inconvenience or impose fees upon the user but otherwise I agree with you and am tempted to buy one just to fuck with advertisers. Backdoors and spying are also a problem in theory except at this point you can't even trust "legitimate" companies on that front so it's a moot point.
- acdha 2mo ago> otherwise I agree with you and am tempted to buy one just to fuck with advertisers. How that actually works in practice is that your favorite sites make less money and your IP gets a bad reputation so you CAPTCHAs or outright blocked. There’s no “sticking it to the man” here, just contributing to the frictional grind making the internet worse for ordinary people.
- DennisP 2mo agoThey make less money, but they also notice lower conversion rates on ads, which might make them rethink their strategy. (IP reputation keeps me from doing it though.)
- snickerbockers 2mo agoYou are drastically over-estimating how much fondness I have had for the web ever since social media companies and search providers colluded to drive everybody into their walled-off fiefdoms.
- inigyou 2mo agoMy IP changes more than once a day. If Google captchas my whole ISP, good for them, hopefully it drives people away from Google.
- elzbardico 2mo agoFrankly, I pay for most of the things I care about in the internet nowadays. Substack, Medium, newspapers, youtube premium, manning books, safari books. TV streaming. The ad supported web is, with very few exceptions, useless.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- cryzinger 2mo agoYou really don't want fraudulent clicks ("invalid traffic", per industry lingo) coming from your home network, because any publishers (apps and websites, per normal-people lingo) who use tools designed to block invalid traffic might start flagging legitimate traffic from your network.
- frollogaston 2mo agoCan confirm. I used to use Ad Nauseam (Firefox extension that clicks all ads), eventually stopped when I was getting captcha'd left and right. Also, visitors on my wifi started getting strange ads. Yes I threw off the algo, but I'm a guy with wife, I'd rather get car ads than like divorce lawyers + gay dating sites.
- picofarad 2mo agoI use ad nauseam and pihole and I get nonesuch.
- frollogaston 2mo agoWhat this misses is the person buying the TV stick doesn't care about the impact on the ad market. The bigger problem is residential proxying, because their IP will end up getting used for something bad.
- hnav 2mo agomost residential proxying these days is used by the purveyors of AI
- inigyou 2mo agoAnd what does that cause? More captchas?
- snickerbockers 2mo agoProbably, but in the worst-case scenario you could unwittingly become an accessory to a felony if the proxy is used to access CSAM. Especially if the proxy ends up caching files.
- inigyou 2mo agoHas that ever happened? Is Mullvad an accessory to downloading CSAM if someone does that?
- snickerbockers 2mo agoThere have been cases of tor exit node operators being investigated for CSAM. Im not aware of any charges but that's the sort of thing where being in the vicinity of the investigation can be almost as bad.
- snickerbockers 2mo agoIf all they did was shove banner ads for boner-pills in my face like they used to 25 years ago I wouldn't mind and I might even turn off adblock. The problem is that modern advertisements on the internet are spyware at best and a malware vector at worst. It's arguably fraudulent to even refer to it as "advertising" at this point, clearly that's just a cover to give them an excuse to sell data to silicon valley corporations that are unironically named after fictional devices used by sci-fi/fantasy villains to manipulate people.
- elzbardico 2mo agoThey can stop paying for obtrusive ads where either they make everyone's life worse or get defrauded, save money using only ethical advertising and use this saved money to improve the quality of their products or pay their workers a little better.
- em-bee 2mo agowhy is running a proxy a bad thing? someone profiting off it could be bad maybe, but even that is good if it pays for my subscription. but compare running tor nodes, and especially exit nodes. that surely would be a good thing, so at least if you think tor is good then running a proxy should be the same and it should be normalized. doing it in secret without the user knowing is what's bad
- glitchc 2mo agoIndeed without my permission is implied. Without it, you have no idea what traffic is being routed and could be on the hook for something nasty like CSAM.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- Dylan16807 2mo agoThose are different issues. Permission doesn't mean you know what the content is, and lack of permission doesn't mean they're going to load anything weird or bad. Lack of permission implies worse ethics overall, but an operation focused on clicking ads will be loading relatively normal sites.
- inigyou 2mo agoHas that ever actually happened? Has anyone gone to court for downloading child porn that was actually through a residential proxy?
- iamnothere 2mo agoNo. You would not be “on the hook” for this as they implied. They are fearmongering. Even if a statute could somehow be stretched to cover it, it would be a nightmare to prosecute something like this. The media would jump all over it.
- inigyou 2mo ago
- kube-system 2mo agoFraud is also bad, even if you aren't fond of those being defrauded.
- blackjack_ 2mo agoFraud that destroys market trust in a market that mostly deals in surveillance and selling intrusive data that was collected mostly unknowingly from the subject seems great to everyone who has any amount of integrity.
- pixl97 2mo agoSo distilling an AI model of one of the big SOTA models is a bad thing now?
- tjpnz 2mo agoWhat about all the fraud committed by the online ad industry?
- ColdStream 2mo agoThey took the idea of the 'Ad-nauseam' add-on for Firefox and used it for their own gains I see.
- culi 2mo agohttps://adnauseam.io/ https://adnauseam.io/
- elzbardico 2mo agoExactly. I consider defrauding ad networks even a civic duty of legitimate resistance. The issue I see with those boxes is the risk of being involved in actual crimes due to the residencial proxy.