Online Advertising Survival: Combating Click Fraud - University of ...

fraudsters are turning to automated and more sophisticated means of committing clickfraud.These methods attempt to hide click fraud attacks through IP diversity. IP diversity isvarying your IP address to disguise that the click is coming from the same computer or IPaddress. IP addresses identify the source location for traffic. Examining the IP addressshows which ISP that person is using. While it is easy to obtain a new IP address bysimply rebooting a modem, it will still be associated with the same ISP.7.2 Low Cost WorkersCertain regions of the world contribute to the majority of click fraud. Companies in thesecountries hire people who are paid to continuously click on ads. Click for pay sites arefreely advertised on the internet (Appendix I). Most of the people are located in India,China, Pakistan, Nigeria or Russia. India is oft rumored to be rife with click farms,whereby rooms of dozens of employees literally click on advertisements all day to earnincome. These professional clickers are paid a nominal sum and will browse aroundyour websites and click on ads every few minutes. To make the appearance oflegitimacy, they occasionally click a link or two on the advertiser sites. As the clicks arewidespread, from different computers across many regions and without any discernablepattern, they are difficult to detect.Many of the people involved in click fraud do not understand exactly what they are doingas generally they are not well educated. The irony is some of the people committing the18