Beware Online Business Owners – Click Fraud Alert

So you finally moved your business online. Now what? You must help your customers find your newly created area in cyberspace. Years ago, you would just list your website with a dozen search engines, and then call it a day. But with over 8 trillion web pages indexed today on major search engines, most companies are finding out that their old techniques are nearly useless.
Here comes google’s “Adwords’ program to the rescue! Basically Google’s Adwords program allows companies as well as personal projects to have advertisements not only on google, but also other participating websites. This program helps create revenue 3 ways:

1. Companies looking to get their products sold, pay google to put out their advertisements via Adwords. The hope to sell more products because more people know about their products because they saw the ad box.
   
2. Webmasters can host relevant advertising via Adwords on their own sites. Google will pay these webmasters every time an ad is clicked on their site.
   
3. Google collects a small amount every time an ad is clicked, no matter if the ad was on google.com or on another website. The webmaster collects more.
   This looks like a win, win for everyone, right? The companies get to connect with their customers, and the web site owner’s advertiser locations get paid when they connect a potential customer to a company.
   

After I completed my Google Spam Sites article, it finally hit me! These webmasters that are using “scraping” techniques to create websites all had Adword ads on their website… But why do I think this is subspecies and a topic for Captain America and Google Fraud Alert you might ask? The answer, I believe, relates why these webmasters created the website in the first place… Evidence indicates the sole purpose is to falsely create revenue by using Adword ads.

If these websites are using illegal techniques to get content, why shouldn’t we think they are using other illegal techniques such as “Click Fraud”? Click Fraud is when webmasters click on Adword advertisements on their own websites, or get other people to do this for them, so they get money from google. The person paying the bill is the unsuspecting company who has a Google adwords box. In my honest opinion, this is even worse than scraping, because now we are talking about actual money STOLEN!

Here are a couple links of webmasters that are using scraping techniques just to fill up space so they can have another page of google’s adwords.

1. GOOGLE ALERT WEBRAW (aka QUIXTAR BLOG) Adwords
   http://www.webraw.com/quixtar/
   
   
   ALERT WEBRAW( aka QUIXTAR BLOG) LINKING MEMBER HUGO – More Adwords
   
2. http://log.hugoschotman.com/hugo/
   

If you look closely, the above links seem to fall inside the same “ring” of websites. Is it possible that some group of webmasters is part of a slimy attempt to operate a google fraud ring?

If the name of this linking hub (link farm) site is webraw.com - as his valid domain indicates- is this person attempting a masquerade? Is he guilty of something other than lack of imagination in domain naming? Is he hiding his webraw identity? I say, "Be proud of your fishy heritage."
Why is he directing his sycophants to call links to his http://www.webraw.com/ site Quixtar Blog? And why is he soliciting donations from an unsuspecting public while participating in what might be seen as questionable business practices? I do see a minor disclaimer. More questionable behavior.

Do we also see an attempted high jacking or cyber squatting on the term Quixtar? Could be. Wonder what ransom amount a ring would have in mind to return a name to its legal owners? I observe. You decide.
Unfortunately this behavior isn’t unique to these two.

Tell us what you think!

Applause! House Passes Spyware Penalty Bills

In addition to protecting you, I also want to let you know when I see something good happening. If I can find something worth awarding an “Alert” star to you’ll find it right here on Google Fraud Alert – keeping searchers safe. Two bills passed the House of Representatives with overwhelming majorities. If passed by the Senate; they will severely penalize spyware makers.





Leading anti-spyware makers and ISPs say that more than 75 percent of consumer (home computers) machines have some form of spyware residing in their systems.

The spyware applications download silently without most home computer users even knowing they are there. By visiting certain malicious web sites, disguised as something benign, the user triggers the download.

In some cases, the computer starts displaying ads for products almost non-stop. In others, the user's visits to sites get tracked and reported to the spyware companies. Users get stuck with sluggish and non-functioning computers crippled by the extra load.

In more criminal uses, spyware logs the keystrokes a user makes, capturing information like usernames and passwords to financial sites, and passes that along to a collecting site.

Greed is a powerful motivator. In the US it is a $2 billion market for these stealth services. It's too much money for some to ignore, and they all too easily toss aside any ethical considerations in favor of the payoff.

Two bills passed by the House prohibit a host of activity committed by spyware makers. Two examples are key logging and phishing (pronounced fishing).

Key logging: Key logging changes browser start pages would be prohibited
Phishing: Phishing identity theft scams also fall into the prohibited category.

Penalty: Violators face jail time of up to 2 years for nuisance spyware, and risk having an additional 5 years tacked on for criminal acts like identity theft.

Each incident could generate fines of up to $3 million per incident. Both of these bills passed the House last year, but the Senate adjourned before they could be presented there. If you want them passed in the Senate you might want to contact your Senator and let them know.

Discuss this Google Fraud Alert article on the forums!

Google Spam Sites

Worthless sites are cluttering up your search for real information on Google. The driving motive is the usual one - greed. These slime-ball site owners, steal content (this is called scraping) or they fake what the site is about to trick you into clicking on it, just so they can have Google text box advertising on their site.

 Here are 2 examples of these sites:




 Scraping Example One
 Scraping Example Two
 Scraping Example Three
 Scraping Example Four

 Scraping Example One
 Scraping Example Two
 Scraping Example Three

Why would they do this? Why would they waste your valuable search time? They do it so someone will click on the advertising boxes.

Why do they want this? They make money from Google and cost the advertiser money.

All too often they are clicking the boxes on their useless site themselves.

When they click to earn revenue from Google, this is Google Click Fraud.

The advertiser is being defrauded out of their advertising dollars. The visitor is being tricked into vesting the site.

This is so obviously corrupt, why isn’t Google overly motivated to stop this? It defrauds the public and the honest advertisers.

Because Google makes money every time the ad is clicked. The advertiser if carrying the load and they don’t even know it is happening.

Captain America’s tip for the day: When tracking deception and fraud – follow the money.

Discuss this Google Fraud Alert article on the forums!

Spam email, who likes it?!

Email spam is communications that you don’t want that arrive in your in box. Do you remember the first time you received spam unwanted email? I bet you opened up the message and read it through a time or two like most everyone else. You might have believed what they were saying or maybe you forgot all about it. Then another spam email came and then another.

More than a half of all emails being sent out are spam…. Spam emails are communications that you don’t want and they try to trick you. Now you are pretty good with detecting spam emails. Or maybe you have software filter out spam for you. Spammer-type people are keenly aware of this decline in spam acceptance over the last couple of years, and they have been searching into new ways to put their products and personal agendas in front of us using deceitful and deceptive practices. Just like some politicians they try hide what they are really doing by blaming others.

Spammers’ latest craze is spamming their message through search engines using their web sites or other people’s web sites. You ask how? Imagine you are interested in finding balanced information about Purina dog food. You would probably log onto a search engine, type in the dog food name and press submit. And nearly instantly, you would find thousands and thousands of pages full of links.. But what one would you click? Probably the first one, because you think this one would be the most relevant, right? Not necessarily true any longer.

Spammers over the last couple years have found out how to manipulate search engine rankings and where their websites appear on your search page. The first URL might be the most popular and have the best information about Purina products but it might also be the person who “cheats the best”. The cheater’s, deceivers reward for cheating is getting your attention. That is the reward for email spammers/cheaters too.

For the most part their websites look just like non-fraud web sites. Because of Google’s popularity, it is the prime candidate for manipulation. I believe the behavior of these unethical people jeopardizes the fabric of Google’s search integrity. These people are tying to trick an unsuspecting search public. Their intent is to manipulate the search process when innocent and interested people are attempting to find accurate information. They are using deception, bluff, scam, dirty tricks, misdirection and cheating. These actions defraud the public and Google. And this is the exact reason I am starting this blog. It’s my mission to ALERT you when I see web sites and people behaving very, very badly. Welcome to Google Fraud Alert.

Discuss this Google Fraud Alert article on the forums!