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from the at-least-someone-likes-the-advertisers dept.
Here's the Seattle Times with a syndicated NY Times article, http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/russian-cybergang-ring-scored-millions-in-giant-ad-fraud/
Researchers say that a Russian cyber-forgery ring has created more than half a million fake internet users and 250,000 fake websites to trick advertisers into collectively paying as much as $5 million a day for video ads that are never watched.
The fraud, which began in September and is still going on, represents a new level of sophistication among criminals who seek to profit by using bots — computer programs that pretend to be people — to cheat advertisers.
"We think that nothing has approached this operation in terms of profitability," said Michael Tiffany, a founder and the chief executive of White Ops, the ad-focused computer security firm that publicly disclosed the fraud in a report Tuesday. "Our adversaries are bringing whole new levels of innovation to ad fraud."
The thieves impersonated more than 6,100 news and content publishers, stealing advertising revenue that marketers intended to run on those sites, White Ops said. The scheme exploited known flaws in digital advertising, including the lack of a consistent, reliable method for tracking ads and ensuring that they are shown to the promised audience.
The spoofed outlets include a who's who of the web: video-laden sites like Fox News and CBS Sports, large news organizations like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, major content platforms like Facebook and Yahoo and niche sites like Allrecipes.com and AccuWeather. Although the main targets were in the United States, news organizations in other countries were also affected.
$5 mil/day is enough to support a pretty good sized team, I wonder how big the scamming operation is?
(Score: 1) by RS3 on Monday December 26 2016, @12:15AM
I agree 100%. Blinded by their own greed. It serves them right for spending so much effort on tracking, spying, compiling, cross-correlating, selling our info.
I get free TV and I'm OK with the ad business model. Ads being louder than program content just gets them muted while I do something else- their loss.
But online I'm most offended by videos that start playing when I'm trying to read an article, so I use several blockers. I've been using Vivaldi for 9 months or so for a few websites which don't work well or at all in Old Opera. I'm sure you know Vivaldi is just repackaged Chrome. It's been quite stable and has lots of great features (which I don't use).
I recommend Ublock 0 (origin), Privacy Badger, uMatrix, and a couple of others I use on other computers and can't remember at the moment. I'll mention them in a followup to this.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday December 31 2016, @12:00AM
I'm sure you know Vivaldi is just repackaged Chrome.
Nope. Its repackaged Chromium. There's a Big difference.
All the Blink, but none of the Spyware.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by RS3 on Saturday December 31 2016, @01:21AM
Too many Chromes and Chromiums. Thanks for the correction and info. Back when I was a whipper-snapper, car bumpers were chrome.
I knew of Chrome and Chromium OS, but not of Chromium the browser, even though I'm using Vivaldi right now. None of it is on my RADAR screen, thanks to Vivaldi. I don't run Chrome (never have) but occasionally need to help people with computer/browser problems. I've known Vivaldi seems (much?) snappier than Chrome, and now I know why. I'm off to get Otter...