Fighting malware and spam

Click fraud

Automated ad clicking to generate revenue

Click fraud is when an automated system - often a trojan clicker or botnet - is set up to pay large numbers of visits to a particular web page, or apply lots of clicks to an individual advertisement, thus fraudulently increasing the apparent popularity of the page and bringing in profits from advertising payments.

Click fraud is a criminal offence in many areas. The main profit-makers from click fraud, the owners of the page whose traffic is being fraudulently increased, are not necessarily the perpetrators - in some cases rival sites or advertising systems have been found to have set up click fraud to incriminate or damage the profits of their competitors, while other more personal motives have also been suggested to be behind instances of click fraud.

Related news articles

SQL attack hacks wide range of sites

CA among victims of major attack linking sites to malware.

08 January 2008

  see all related news stories

Poll

VB2009