6 ms·
Uncovering an advertising fraud scheme (NSFW) (2011)
- Hopka 14y agoAlthough an absolutely great article, this is 2 years old. Previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2333824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2333824
- TDL 14y agoThanks for the link, I was so drawn in that I didn't even think of checking the date when I started to read it.
- skcin7 14y agoBe sure to also read the follow up for the actual solution that Ad-safe implemented here: http://www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/2012/03/50-of-ads-are-never-seen.html http://www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/2012/03/50-of-ads-are-...
- CyrusL 14y agoThis is a major ongoing topic in the ad world. For those interested in the topic, here are two more articles from today on publisher fraud: http://www.adexchanger.com/online-advertising/to-catch-a-botnet/ http://www.adexchanger.com/online-advertising/to-catch-a-bot... http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/meet-most-suspect-publishers-web-148032 http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/meet-most-suspect-publ...
- kreilly 14y agoTwo other articles today named ad networks that are making money on this type of fraudulent traffic: http://paidcontent.org/2013/03/19/massive-bot-network-is-draining-6-million-a-month-from-online-ad-industry-says-report/ http://paidcontent.org/2013/03/19/massive-bot-network-is-dra... http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/meet-most-suspect-publishers-web-148032 http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/meet-most-suspect-publ...
- kanzure 14y agoHere's the source of the Chameleon botnet details: http://www.spider.io/blog/2013/03/chameleon-botnet/ http://www.spider.io/blog/2013/03/chameleon-botnet/ comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5400573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5400573
- mrintegrity 14y agoSo whats the major disincentive to people who read this and immediately think "Kaching!"? (me) There must be a down side, apart from the seedy feeling someone might get from doing this.
- paulmolluzzo 14y agoI'm no lawyer, but this look like wire fraud. Plus there's a trend of "he did it on a computer so burn him at the stake" in federal prosecution lately.
- fnordfnordfnord 14y agoBut not if you wore an expensive suit while doing it.
- mejari 14y agoThe guy in the 8,000 dollar suit is going to jail because of ads, COME ON
- skcin7 14y ago> "he did it on a computer so burn him at the stake" This is a result of the general public's incredible ignorance when it comes to how computers work. I hope this trend will fade soon as newer generations that have been raised on computers become older. I really dislike the whole "he did it on a computer so burn him at the stake" mentality that government seems to have today.
- jbooth 14y agoI think its more specifically a case of senior legislators and policymakers hatefearing the internet. They're supposed to be the rulemakers.
- arbuge 14y agoIt's been 2 years and the name of the perpetrator is in the article. Has he faced any charges?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- shurcooL 14y agoThat was a very insightful read, thanks.
- MichaelGG 14y ago>For the technically curious: reading the address of the top frame is a challenging problem. For security reasons, browsers do not allow cross-domain scripting. So, it is not possible to just call the "top" object and read its properties. We have a proprietary solution for this. Are they exploiting a security bug?
- the_french 14y agoI figure they have some sort of iframe busting script that lets them gain access to the top frame.
- jessaustin 14y agoI'll speculate they're using the referrer, although I think that only lets you jump up one level and then you're stuck. The client isn't required to send the referer header so it may not work at all. Still there are some plausible situations in which it works.
- Mandatum 14y agoWell you could send the previous referrer(s) as an array in a GET request on the iframe? So the child iframe gets the referrer and the previous referrer(s)? The ad company should be able to pick that up by looking at the request data. However on a small-scale this would be easily bypassed and most likely go under the radar with most advertisers.
- jonknee 14y agoMaybe I'm confused as to where their kit runs, but there's no reason to assume they're using a commercial browser. It sounds like they're monitoring sites which screams "bot" to me.
- gcb0 14y agoyou'd be impressed by the amount of snake oil sold in the ad world. for the latest ones, see the 'solutions' for viewability (i.e. another way to try to not pay publishers for displayed ads). they are all a joke that work on less than 1% of the cases you see in the wild. Yet, no mention of that is made. When you see "proprietary", "patented", assume "BS". now, answering your question, this is pretty much a mix of auto/manual monitoring. So with very little effectiveness. And/OR the publishers in question serve the page with Script tags, so they have access to the referrer of the original content page.
- baby 14y agoI can recognize a lot of stuff I used to do when I was 16 and owned that kind of website. A lot of linking to send traffic to other websites who would send traffic back. A lot of fake traffic through iframes, and often through <img src="url" width="0" height="0"> because iframes fake traffic would be protected against. A lot of exchange with that kind of websites. There was a huge bubble. Also those websites gives you what you want to see. We all started doing porn, but the most clever guys understood that you had to post more. Gore, Fights, Shock...
- gcb0 14y agoIronically, this is only possible because advertise resellers created all sort of markets for scamming the publishers of actually getting paid for the ad they show (advertises have to pay for 3rd party reporting, brand protection, etc, etc, etc. all that dillutes the $3~4 cpc the brands pay to the 3c the publishers receivers in the end) if it worked like it works in TV or radio, this wouldn't be possible to begin with. or wouldn't be profitable.
- gcb0 14y agoone flaw on the estimates: it assume 100% of the uses leave the popunder running. anyone have any data on the effectiveness of popunders? this is one area i never have to deal with (thankfully)
- Zimahl 14y agoEffectiveness? Like click-through rate? It's irrelevant in this model, really. The popunder loads the page that loads all of the other ad-clicking domain pages, and since it's a popunder it's probably not noticed until the browser has loaded the entire contents. It's damn brilliant. Paying $3k for low-end $500k? That's a great ROI.
- gcb0 14y agomy point is: how many people even let the popupunder load? i visit a few forums that have popunders for the first sessio n click. it's almost a knee jerk reaction to close the window while i wait for the forum index to load. He is making the assumption that 100% of the visits translates to a popunder being able to do it's thing. I just want to know if the real world the number is 99% or 10%.
- bjourne 14y agoThe described scheme has nothing to do with popunders really. A hidden iframe is loaded in which the advertisers ad is "displayed" and the publisher gets payed on cpm. The user doesn't even get to see the ad.
- malachismith 14y agoClose... but the business model for most of these operations is traffic generation. Need 1M uniques this month to hit your numbers? No worries!! Enter your credit card here!
- stratagerm 14y agoWow, searching for "buy traffic" or "real human traffic" (sans quotes) is an eye-opener. They may be real humans and not bots (though I doubt it) but it's still fraud. What a cesspool.
- fthd 14y agoI think I'm missing the connection to the "legitimate" publisher. Is the publisher paying the scammer for traffic? How are they doing that? unless they're in on the scam as well.
- thekeeks 14y agozzzzzzzzzzz
- signed0 14y agoFYI: The NSFW content is a handful of tiny pornographic images.
- brc 14y agoI tried running some PPC ads once, for a month or so. I spent a lot of cash and got nowhere. Curiously I showed a healthy conversion rate on some ads, which encouraged me. I spent an entire day tracking down a lot of these things. Turned out that in every single case, there was no sale, and I couldn't believe in a million years that traffic from these sites were really following my ads. I stopped spending money with Google. A year later they sent me a voucher and begged me to try again. So I tweaked some settings, cut the list right down and spent their $150. Same results. My overriding impression is that display ads, PPC ads and the like are an absolute cesspool of fraud and it's a waste of time trying to untangle the mess.
- hayksaakian 14y agoBy 'healthy conversion rate' do you mean people signed up for your service/ purchased your product? Or are you simply referring to click through rate?
- brc 14y agoThe conversion rate that you get in Adwords. This is supposedly created by having code on your order completion page. But Adwords was showing conversions (implying sales) for sales that never existed. So either scammers were spoofing the conversions or the code was faulty. But the conversion optimization works by increasing the ads that convert. All good as long as the conversions actually are real.
- hayksaakian 14y agoThanks for the insight, I didn't realize this was even a thing.
- paborden 14y agoOne of the first rules of Adwords is to disable showing ads across the display network (this is enabled by default). You should only be showing ads on the search network (and only google.com at that, not the search partners). Setup correctly, these types of scams aren't much of a problem with Adwords. FWIW, I've found Adwords to be very very effective, provided you know exactly what you're doing, and know how to adjust your campaign settings such that Google doesn't bleed unnecessary money from you.