News is breaking today that Anchor Intelligence, a click-fraud monitoring service, has uncovered a massive 1000+ people ring that managed to bring in at least $3 million. The have some pretty powerful visualizations showing how the ring worked, where you can quite plainly see the interconnected sites in the center.
“We have seen 200 fraud rings,” says Anchor VP Richard Sim, “and this one by far trumps them all. I think it is indicative of how sophisticated the click fraud is getting. We are seeing the sheer scale and size of these rings growing.”
Click fraud occurs when someone sets up a website, signs up with an ad network, and then clicks on the ads to generate ad revenues with false clicks. DormRing1 operated the same way, except it easily involved more than 1,000 people who set up more than 10,000 Websites to spread out the fraud. The image above depicts a portion of the ring, with each red dot representing a source of fraudulent clicks with similar digital signatures.
via The Evolution Of Click Fraud: Massive Chinese Operation DormRing1 Uncovered.
