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Comment by mrintegrity | Hacker News Reader

So 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.

I'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.

> "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.

I think its more specifically a case of senior legislators and policymakers hatefearing the internet. They're supposed to be the rulemakers.

But not if you wore an expensive suit while doing it.

The guy in the 8,000 dollar suit is going to jail because of ads, COME ON

It's been 2 years and the name of the perpetrator is in the article. Has he faced any charges?

If you notice in the comments, someone with the listed name claims their identity was stolen.

Its quite expected that a competent criminal would use a stolen identity so as not to connect themselves to the crime in any way.

Ad networks know who they cut a check to. There is always a paper trail in this business, even if he registered the domains in somebody els's name (risky strategy if so - that somebody else would be legal owner).

I immediately think "kaching" as well. However this article was published in March 2011, and I imagine the advertising world has evolved slightly to prevent this fraud from happening, so your scheme would have to be clever enough to outwit any changes. If the scheme has been exposed for two years I imagine there are more players utilizing this scheme in the fraud-market. Only way to know for sure is to try it yourself and learn from experience, in which case you'd be breaking the law and taking a risk.

maybe they've closed these holes, but click fraud has been an issue every since the earliest days of banner ads, so I'd be really surprised if it has been eliminated completely.

Yes, there will always be people that invest time/effort into figuring out how to exploit a system when there's money involved! I am sure there are still many exploits, it's just a matter of being more clever than the individual(s) that designed the system, and being willing to take the risk of indictment in case your scheme is discovered.

We stay pretty on top of things, and have a lot of data to look over for suspicious activity. Staying ahead of us means continually iterating methods, at which point, why not just get a job?

That said, it's nice to see this stuff separate the slick from the competent in the industry.

> at which point, why not just get a job?

Considering the pot could be somewhere in the several 100Ks per month (according to the article) range, which 'job' would that be?

I remember a buddy of mine telling me about doing affiliate advertising and using botnets to send fake click throughs to make money.

This was five or six years ago, but it looks like not much has changed.

And hopefully karma catches on with whomever does this and rot in jail.

I'm curious what laws this breaks. Has anyone been prosecuted for similar click fraud? It seems like a contract dispute and the advertiser has the ability to not pay and perhaps come after the scammer for past losses, but it's a TOS violation more than a legal one.

Google is pretty famous for shutting the door on AdSense publishers without much of an appeals process, but I haven't heard of them pursuing anyone criminally. Google even let go a case that involved extortion (someone set on releasing click fraud software unless Google paid up).

http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2006-12-04/the-vanishing...

It appears Google values its secrets more than their losses to click fraud.

I'm not sure what laws it breaks but the laws are so ambiguous you could really be charged with a wide variety of things all depending on how much the prosecution wants to put you away. Could be anything from money laundering to computer abuse to mail fraud depending on a lot of variables involved - and also very much depends on what country the person accused is from.

the irony of this comment coming from Mr. Integrity is not lost on me

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