Unraveling a massive click fraud scheme (NNSquad)

[Martin Ward]

Panos Ipeirotis writes at the end of his dissection of the click fraud scheme:

"The guy essentially realized that this type of fraud is really behaving like
a parasite within a much bigger ecosystem."

Given that the entire advertising industry is itself a parasite,
this makes the guy a parasite on a parasite: which is probably a good thing!

Is it really "fraud"? Only in the same sense that running Adblock Plus
is fraud, or recording the programmes I want to watch and editing out
the adverts before I watch them is fraud. What about going
to the kitchen to get a drink when the adverts are on? Or just not paying
attention to the adverts? Or paying attention but deciding not to buy
the goods advertised?

What is the worst that could happen? The collapse of the entire
advertising industry? And this would be a bad thing?
(Those worried about all the jobs that would be lost needn't worry:
they could all get jobs in the stone-throwing-and-reglazing industry,
with no loss to the economy as a whole).

STRL Reader in Software Engineering and Royal Society Industry Fellow
martin at gkc.org.uk  http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/

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