[FRAUD] LoveCPM, CPMBullet, eCPM.biz, CPXTraffic

Hello all,

Want to make you aware of a very serious situation. Usually I do not publicly come out and discuss publisher accounts because not only is it against company policy its just not the right thing to do. But here is a crazy story, and a list of networks which are owned by the same people and involved in fraudulent activity. Its such a serious situation covering a few different networks, that this needs to be presented, the facts need to be laid out, and people need to be aware.

Part 1:

So we had a company eCPM.biz sign up with us as a publisher...

The other day it was brought to my attention not only by our compliance team but by several LoveCPM and CPMBullet clients that they are running hidden/invisible iframes in their tags which contain hundreds of ads.

I was confused because wait, we don't work with those networks. So I viewed one of the links sent to us. This is what I saw:



So, looking into whose tags they are using this handy tool we have, we were able to figure out that the tags running on this page belong to eCPM.biz. Immediately the account was deactivated. The activity was reported to AppNexus.

Effectively they are using your site, and your traffic to scam hundreds of companies out of thousands of dollars. They run an ad from another network, pay you a small portion, but secretly under that ad, load an invisible iframe which is similar to the page shown above.

Anyone who uses these networks are in danger of being blacklisted by advertisers, and major exchanges; as well as possibly losing thousands in hosting, ad serving, and potential earnings in the future.

We did some research into Bruf Media Ltd. which is the company which owns eCPM.biz and is the company which the point of contact from eCPM.biz originally claimed he was from several months ago. We start uncovering a lot of things.



If you have any additional information to add as far as your interaction with LoveCPM, CPXTraffic, CPMBullet, or eCPM.biz please do!

Find part 2 below.

 

So here is the continuation....

Part 2:

CPX Traffic; PTP Supported. Domain Expired.

URL: http://www.adswiki.net/6239/cpxtraffic



See the contact email?



Next...

LoveCPM:

http://www.adswiki.net/6603/lovecpm


Notice the contact email? eCPM.biz



Then theres CPMBullet which I have never heard of but decided to include in this report as its part of the issue...



notice some striking similarities in the registrar information?

When the point of contact from eCPM.biz was notified of us finding out about this, he said it was CPMBullet's fault, they are his "publisher" and they were mad at him. The issue was also coming from LoveCPM and as I will show below, others have also seen the same issue on LoveCPM's tags and we have shown above that they are clearly the same people ie.

 

Part 3:

Credit: http://www.adswiki.net/6603/lovecpm



Now. let me say this. Our team here is far too good at putting this together, and its the responsibility of the industry to fight fraud. Really the moral of the story is - Don't run with networks who work like this, it will result in harm to your ability to earn revenue from your web traffic in the long run. Just don't do it.

If you think you can fraud networks, especially the one I work for, and get away with it? Think again. Just like most networks we ban anyone who conducts such activity with out payment, but; we have to have hard proof before doing so, its not in our favor to ban people, but we have to. Above is the plymouth rock of hard proof.

 

i love PPC industry and ...good job my friend , keep us safe because i know is big problems in PPC industry because to many people complain , this is goodness from you and keep fighting until we shut down the corruption from some PPC networks.....and remember the word " network " .....i hope that this industry and all industry will be profitable for all

 

The almighty buck is very powerfull. ad networks can stop this from day one. but i know some networks also who tolerate this kind of actions under certain level. easy money for them, pay those kind of publishers just a little and take big money from advertisers. the so call "publishers" are happy because they make some money from nothing and they will keep doing this.

This guys take it to the next level. They are "the network". There is no limit set.

 

We try our best.

In a lot of cases such as this, this was hidden in such a way, it was extremely difficult to find. It took paying close attention and taking feedback from some of their clients who reported this to us. When you have a network claiming to have 2 other "publishers" but they are embedding a hidden iframe, but then when you call them on it, they are like "its our publishers" most networks are satisfied with that response, when they should be doing the due diligence to ensure they are not support fraud. Internet fraud is a Trillion dollar industry. Its hard to catch because the security technologies charge an arm an a leg to be able to detect it. Large networks don't spend the time closely monitoring every account. But there's a huge level of deception which comes from the publishers.

I have seen everything, getting suspicious vibes from a publisher, then asking for ID and getting a fake one from the UAE, etc. Literally they go through infinite lengths to cover themselves up.

 

Hello,

Now, a lot of advertisers do not work with CPM model because traffic from publisher has very high potential fraud. They only work with CPA, CPL, CPI model and this makes eCPM of publisher decrease significantly.


We should be wary of fraudulent actions of publishers include: Using css attributes or hidden div to hide advertising, refresh browser, hidden iframe, placed ads on a page, Hide IP , Fake MAC adress, Browse fake, Fake screen pixel, Pixel browser, Fake ref macro, Auto clicks.