FRAUD ALERT! IF YOU ARE A NETWORK....

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ricklea

ricklea

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Feb 1, 2008
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First Time I have ever posted here. I got this from one of my good contacts. Please check it out bc it could be happening to you.

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I have uploaded on Youtube the most amazing example of fraud that I have ever seen in 10 years. It consists of impressions fraud, attempts to hijack the computer (note the norton warning), loads of popup ads, and then at the end hundreds of forced cpc search clicks in the way of pops.

Our crack vizi team with the help of some other experts confirmed that this is huge. I spoke to a well known expert/attorney who told me that they have seen this from some of their clients. I have spoken to law enforcement also who has told me they are on the radar already.

What is really amazing is that this publisher in a few days served over 10mm impressions on our network. Which means if according to this log file, they loaded over 1000 more ads from other networks and all these pops, they could be doing billions and billions of impressiosn from other networks. That translates into millions of dollars. Possibly tens of millions of dollars. Combined with the pops, the cpc fraud, this could be a huge operation.

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Please distribute this, so that people know what is out there. What is really crazy that is of the many networks that are defrauding, most were gracious to get this information - they had wondered about the publisher, and now had information so they could take action.... but some of the networks refused to do anything, ignored the phone calls, and one even had their attorney contact me and threaten to sue ME if I told anyone that they were being defrauded. What does this mean? Some networks care, others just want to rake in the bucks themselves even if there is fraud involved. If they are taking their cut, why do anything?

Question? Would you hire a consultant to do something about this? I already have two clients that I am working with on this, but considering opening a firm to handle fraud on networks, ad detection, etc. Thoughts?

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xmcp123 said:
I have one question actually. The network that threatened to sue...is it a well known network? Or just some joker with DT?
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Sounds like these are traditional CPM networks and bottom-tier PPC networks, not affiliate networks.
 
crazy right -- I got that email yesterday from the Pace Lattin of Vizi-Inc, i dont know anything about this fraud but it does look like some dirty crap, i also don't know much about Pace or his company - but when i now look through my emails I seem to have a ton of emails like this from him, don't know how i got on his list or why but i sent him an email about this video and got no response so i assume this was sent to the masses.
 
Yeah, got the same email from Pace Lattin. Brendan, did you ever subscribe to the Adbumb or Adotas newsletters? I think his company owns them, so that might be how he got the email addresses.
 
Impressions/CPC

Rick -

Way to start strong. . .this is a VERY important thread from both an industry perspective and from the view of my campaigns. We distribute proprietary CPC campaigns that are extremely backend sensitive and a handful of unscrupulous potential 'partners' have utilized creative methods to defraud us. This type of behavior/distribution would have an adverse effect on the breadth of our campaigns, and would be detrimental to our entire business. THANK YOU for the heads up on this - I can only hope other nitwits don't get 'ideas' from this video. . .

Now to answer your question (below), I have heard for years about consultants and fraud prevention gurus, and I consistently thought this would be a great idea. . .however, there are so many varieties of fraud that constantly evolve, this chase would be more like the 'great baseball steroid chase,' where the cheaters always stay ahead of the authorities.

That being said, a PROACTIVE, strong fraud team with standard prevention methods and consistent improvement would be a benefit to any network.


ricklea said:
Question? Would you hire a consultant to do something about this? I already have two clients that I am working with on this, but considering opening a firm to handle fraud on networks, ad detection, etc. Thoughts?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5mYR5lqXTk
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Ev
 
is this the reason why when i try testing new display advertising networks, i spend $1000 and get 2 leads
 
ricklea said:
but some of the networks refused to do anything, ignored the phone calls, and one even had their attorney contact me and threaten to sue ME if I told anyone that they were being defrauded.
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This isn't necessarily because they want to keep making money off dubious leads, this is because they don't want their clients to know that their network has been compromised. Now that they know, they will clean it up quietly, before their client finds out, and takes them to court.

This happens all of the time online, particularly with large merchants. The faith people have in the safety of dealing with these firms, is a reputation they will sue to protect, even if they are clearly in the wrong, they will tie people up with huge costs and red tape until they can clean up the mess internally then announce it on their own.

Think like a samurai.
 
Jesus Christ! That's a fuckton of cookies and pops from one page.. Sure would like to know who's behind it so we can add them to our affiliate blacklist we share with other networks. I guess the guys behind it thought if you're going to fraud a network you should do it full fuckin blast.
 
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