My Account Sabotaged: I've Been Booted!

Funny you should mention that, heres more http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=20427 with this quote in there >>>The most visible allegation is the charge of negligence on the part of Google, claiming that Google isn't doing enough to prevent the problem of click fraud.<<<
I think Google is reacting to these court cases because if they lose many more will spring up.

 

Yeah, that'll inhibit this group's earning potential.

I've just removed my AS code from my DP control panel. Thanks for the heads-up.

AmCy

 

The media has noticed and so have many attornies. This is just the beginning.

You can't accuse people of stealing and take their income and then cite "proprietary" algorythms as your evidence and not disclose how you determined the so called fraud.

This was a litigation waiting to happen. Their legal dept. was asleep and because of that will lose.

I'm no attorney, but that's my opinion and it's playing out.

 

Amen to that. It's got "class action" written all over it.

AmCy

 

In google's defense, they need to keep their fraud detection mechanisms private in order to ensure their success. Using their service does not necessitate full disclosure. If that was the case, all the SE's would have to publish their algorithms and they would be wide open to abuse.

I think there could be a better system out there other than kicking people out without notice, but with all the rampant fraud out there it's difficult to be tolerant - especially when they are dealing with their customers' money.

More and more of these "sabotage" messages have been coming around and I wonder if there isn't a growing market for an internal fraud protection mechanism. Something that would detect click patterns and prevent sites from displaying ads to those users. On the other hand, all you would need is a cache file to get around that, so google's cooperation in building such a product would be required. Maybe passing a hash along that contained information about when the ad was sent out from the server and the ip of the receiving system. Google is certainly aware of the problem and I'm sure has something in the works. Adwords and adsense are their cash cows. They will protect themselves.

Re-establishing a relationship with Google is difficult at best. It's a good thing this is just a supplemental income for you. Many sites that rely on adsense income will have to revert to text link advertising, pop-ups, or e-mail marketing in order to replace the revenue and that is not good for the internet community in general. There are only two real players in this market and getting overture ads on a site requires heavy traffic. A third party will eventually make themselves a player, but I suspect we are years out from that happening. Maybe MSN if they ever gained more marketshare, but more likely a company that isn't very well known today.

 

I agree, Here is a quote from a message I posted in another thread about a very basic click spamming prevention method.

It has potential. Not sure I have the skills to develop it completely, but I would be more than willing to work with others on developing a system like this.

 

Freakrot, your idea would work on some level, and it's not very hard to do, but it will only stop the naive attackers. The more sophisticated ones click on your ads from multiple IP's through proxies or whatever else if they're determined enough.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's a neat idea, but I don't think users should be the ones going out of their way to do this. I think the google engineers are the ones who should be worrying about it. What control does a publisher have? NONE! Anyone can come and click the ads and "raise a red flag" on your account anytime they like. It's an extremely flawed system and I hope google finds a solution for it as soon as they can.

I still have faith in google that they will at least give AmyC a chance to explain (and if that happens, i'm positive they'll reinstate the account). Hopefully they won't let me down.

Wish you the best of luck AmyC, hopefully you're account will be reopened

 

I have no doubt that G are working on the 'invalid click' scenario.
But in the meantime, we as publishers are going to have to do something about it.
What I'm thinking of is:
Using the adsense_clicklogger.php+js to populate a database.
The database is checked by the page code, if there are more than x number of clicks from a specific IP address in x amount of time, then something else is served to the user rather than adsense ads.

One thing I have noticed about the click logger (downloaded from an attachment on this forum) is that there is no licensing details, nor author contact details within the file. Anyone know who actually wrote it ?

ADDED:
I've found it on www.monetizers.com there's a php version and an asp version. It doesn't look to me like they've bothered to assign a license of anykind to it. They've simply released it into the public domain I think.

 

freakrot, i was thinking about the same when started reading this thread, but later i realized that it wouldn't work. Imagine that someone come to your site and started to click on your ads, for your script it is one visit and you cannot change anything until he refresh your page twice ...

 

The situation is unfortunate, AmCy I wish you every success with it.

It would be nice if there was a sure fire way to deal with it (as in prevent click fraud), but unfortunately there just isn't.

We're all at the mercy of G in this regard.

I look forward to a positive outcome for you, or at the very least learning from your experience.

best,

JL.

 

Not true.
You could have the javascript call a php page to check the click. It wouldn't matter whether they refreshed their browser or not, the javascript would still execute.
I've not played much with javascript, but with other languages you can call an external script, have that script perform some function or other then return something back to the javascript. Depending on what was returned back, you could force a reload of the local window or simply have it redirect to a warning page or whatever.

 

Is there a global database of click fraudsters origins similar to spammers databases?

That data could be used to help prevent it to some extent.

You could also limit clicks to past averages to prevent odd spikes. If you have a decent number of clicks you will know the average number you get every 5 minutes. If you get more, start showing CJ ads or whatever.

I'm sure that if you combine freakrot's ideas, mine about blocking your own IP's, and some other data sets you could significantly reduce the chance of getting hammered.

If yuo get these 'pro's' who use proxies after you, they probably have a motive of sorts. They will be hard to avoid but those are extreme cases I guess.

 

yep, you are right, i can reload window on click, gonna write this script

 

you shouldn't specifically need to reload the window.
What I'm thinking is:
Javascript recognises if they exit via adsense - somehow (I'm still looking to find out how the script does that - if the exit is via adsense, some other javascript calls a php page which checks ip address and click numbers. If click numbers are exceeded, then the page is refreshed or user sent to a warning page. if click is OK, it is passed back to adsense.
At least I think that's what I'm trying to do

 

i think this script will help you

 

yep, that's the one I'm using

 

I really feel sorry to hear about ur google adsense account.
But its really hard to get back account as google doesnt seems to listen when it comes to TOS of company.

 

Give them time to respond to your emails - I am sure working with them to resolve the problem will get it sorted. They have to protect the integrity of it all - please let us know when you do get a response to your emails.

 

It makes me sad, I just came accross your problems now and read nearly all here.

I'm concerned about the poker site, it's still related to gambling, isn't it? You had ads on them, right?

OK, when someone clicks on your ads at these pages then they're invalid clicks somehow, because the ads are not supposed to be there. Try to look at it from this angle and perhaps this is the answer (I'm not sure) but this could be a possibility.

I think if you confess this mistake, apologize, tell them that they shall deduct all earnings from these pages and ask them if there is another reason, you'll get a reply.

Google employees check randomly sites and perhaps popped into your poker site, the person in charge looked up a couple of pages and then decided without long explainations to shut the account down. - (I can imagine this scenario)

ANYWAY

I'm quite confident that your account is going to be reinstated soon again.

 

I know google sends that generic email to cover almost everything in the TOS... So "invalid clicks" could mean breaking any part of the TOS since the TOS is there to stop "invalid clicks"

I remember that post by critters thanking you for your advice about putting images on top of ads.

I visited your site after reading that and thought to myself that this may be calling too much attention to those ads by placing the credit card images on top of them. I can't remember if you stated that you asked Google if it was ok to do that or not. I like this method but am wandering if Google thought it was a little too much attention.