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

12.4 User LocationIn general terms, user location is an attempt to identify the actual physical location ofinternet users.The common method is to take someone’s IP address and perform asearch at Whois information at ARIN (the American Registry for Internet Numbers).The primary purpose of the ARIN Whois database is to maintain information aboutnetworks allocated by ARIN, as well as to maintain information about how thosenetworks have been partitioned by ISP’s 58 . ARIN uses this information to keep track ofwho owns which network on the internet. If you cannot locate the IP address on ARIN,the IP address may be assigned outside the Americas, in which case RIPE NetworkCoordination Center for all Russian, European, and Middle Eastern registries, or the AsiaPacific Network Information Center may be helpful.The simplest application of user location is for preventing credit card fraud through amatching of the IP address of the online user to the physical owner address of thecardholder. However, it has relevance to click fraud as well. For the purposes of clickfraud detection, user location is used to filter out invalid clicks or fraudulent clicks onproducts or services only available in one country but clicks coming from another wherethe product or service is not available. This is most often associated with the low costworkers or click farms as described in 7.2.The problem with user location technology is the issue of error rates involved in theability to pinpoint web users. The example quoted most often involves a large internet58 Whois Databases, http://www.yourdictionary.com/whois-databases, Retrieved June 2, 200849