Do you think that there is a risk of violating Adsense TOS when using the Siteadvisor plugin for Firefox on our own websites. This plugin checks if the site you are currently visiting is safe, free of spyware, adware and malware threat. By doing so, it checks the external links from a page and can detect if any of them comes from advertising network, it then subsequently rate them in terms of potential danger. Do you think that it checks individually the links in the Adsense ads which could mean invalid clicks on them ? I installed this plugin to check if external links on the forum I manage are safe for the users but of course I am curious to know how my web sites are rated. Thanks for your input.
I would think that since adsense is pretty much governed by javascript, the plugins wouldn't be able to click, but I don't know, this is what they say about their method: # Web sites are tested for excessive pop-ups, "phishing" and other fraudulent practices, and browser exploits. So far we've tested sites representing more than 95% of Web traffic. # Downloads are analyzed by installing software on our test computers and checking for viruses and any bundled adware, spyware or other unwanted programs. We've tested more than 475,000 downloads to date. # Sign-up forms are completed using a one-time use e-mail address so any subsequent e-mail can be tracked. We track the volume and "spamminess" of e-mail from more than 1.3 million places already. So it seems they're limited in what they can see, I wonder if someone makes a link dynamically with javascript, can their robot read it?
Your individual siteadvisor extention is not a spider, it will only report what the spiders from McAfee report. Therefore, the only spiders going through your site and clicking links are from siteadvisor themselves, not your extention.