The Truth Adsense Click Fraud Can NOT be Stopped
by: Joseph Tierney
Your probably reading this article because you use Google Adwords to bring traffic to your website, or your a click fraudster yourself, wanting to see what kind of information I have for you. Most of you click fraudsters will think that I have no idea what I am talking about, and that I do not know your methods. Well, trust me buddy, I KNOW ALL ABOUT YOU AND WHAT YOU DO.
If you are new to the click fraud scene, here is an example:
1. Scumbag puts Google Adsense ads on his website.
2. The scumbag then proceeds to cheat Google Adsense by creating false clickthroughs and impressions, in return earning him a pretty nice profit, because he isn’t even working on his website, just generating false traffic.
All of you people that run campaigns through Google Adwords are thinking, ‘this guy has no idea what he is talking about, Google has everything under control and they even state so publicly!ก
WOW! What kind of pay per click company would admit that they DO NOT have click fraud under control? I wonder what would happen to their business immediately following that statement.
Estimates say that nearly 20% of all clicks for Adsense are illegitimate. In my honest opinion I believe this number to be around 3035% from some of the things I have seen.
Alrite, now the big question, how are they doing it?
There are a number of ways that people are cheating, including the กclick groupsก from India that click on your ads for you and create big pay checks as long as you pay them their $0.50 an hour so they can buy bread for their family.
But Iกm going to show you the technical way that Google Adsense is cheated, not poor people clicking ads. Iกm talking about extremely smart programmers that create hitbots to cheat Adsense. And, NO, Iกm not talking about that piece of garbage กCACAก or Clicking Agent that you find on Google. I am talking about PRIVATE programs and scripts that are only used by private groups.
How do these scripts get away undetected you ask?
Simple, letกs actually take a look at Googleกs click fraud protection (This is what I have summed up, I seriously don’t believe they have anything other protection because people are still cheating using these methods as you read this article.)
If you actually take a look at Googleกs Adsense code when it is on your webpage you will find the URL that is used to retrieve ads. (RightClck your ad Iframe and click กView Page Informationก or something similar.)
Here is an example of the URL that you will find: http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/ads?client=capub2521202633232871&dt=1124847235453&lmt=1124631699&format=468x60_as&output=html&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.yoursite.com%2F&color_bg=ECF8FF&color_text=000000&color_link=0033FF&color_url=0033FF&color_border=DDAAAA&cc=59&u_h=768&u_w=1024&u_ah=738&u_aw=1024&u_cd=32&u_tz=240&u_java=true
Now letกs decode this up a little bit, shall we?
client=capub2521202633232871 Your client code, this tells Google who to assign the clickthrough money to.
dt=1124847235453 Javascript, if you use the command google_date = new Date(); document.write(google_date.getTime()) Which generates 1124847235453.
This shows you the number of milliseconds since midnite January 1, 1970. This is what seems to be Googleกs biggest automated proxy clicker fraud prevention. Doesn’t seem too hard to generate with 2 lines of code now does it?
lmt=1124631699 The last time your webpage was updated. LMT stands for Last Modified Time, pretty easy Javascript to generate this one too document.write(document.lastModified); Which generates 1124631699.
(Notice Iกm skipping a bunch, thatกs because they are just showing the type of ad, colors, and size that you are using.)
cc=59 Seems to be some random number based on the screen width, height, and color scheme. Iกve seen this number go from 20 all the way up to 400. Iกm sure they don’t use this to reliably track click fraud.
u_h=768 Height of your screen settings.
u_w=1024 Width of your screen settings.
u_ah=738 Your available screen height.
u_aw=1024 Your available screen width.
u_cd=32 Color scheme on windows, e.g. 32bit.
u_tz=240 Your monitor refresh rate or something else that isn’t important, Iกve never seen it not 240.
u_java=true Just seeing if you have java enabled.
There are some other variables that are sometimes in the URL such as กu_his=ก this means how many pages you have visited since you started up your browser. Thereกs also some MIME type checks and how many plugins you have installed, but these variables come up very rarely. I think they are only meant for Netscape/Firefox browsers.
Now that we have กdecodedก the supposed unbeatable Google Adsense code, what do you think about click fraud? You still think it is rare?
After randomizing all the data and sending an automated query to their Adsense URL, all the scumbag has to do is parse out all of Googleกs click URLกs and click one of them, giving him a click through. This can all be easily faked with even a Visual Basic program. A newbie programmer could infact cheat Google Adsense without much knowledge.
Alrite you say, they beat the javascript code detection but doesn’t Google use cookies so they can’t do this?
No, Google does not use cookies for Adsense.
Well what about IPtracking? Someone can’t have that many proxies!
There are click groups that leave these programs running on their computer. They each randomly click each otherกs URLกs automatically. The person running the program doesn’t even have to do anything, but he is still contributing to the success of their group and himself.
Does that sound too farfetched? I am telling you that there are click groups that do this now and have been since the old Linkshare PPC days in 1999. Yes, if you were an advertiser on Linkshare back around 19992002, you got RAPED.
And that isn’t all. I have read on the internet that there is currently over 100,000 people infected in the United States alone with trojan proxy servers. These proxy servers run on random ports so that Google can’t just do a simple port 8080 or 80 check on it to see if itกs a proxy. The majority of these proxy servers are used for credit card fraud, but a lot of them are also used to cheat Google Adsense and other pay per click programs. These proxies are athome users that look like normal dialup, cable, and dsl users from all across the world, but mainly United States. There is NO WAY to prove that they are a proxy.
Random UserAgent strings is another tactic that is often used by click fraudsters. This makes Google think that a lot of different browsers are clicking the links, just keeping them further from finding out the truth.
On a side note, you may be thinking that the new Yahoo! pay per click program may be the way to go. I checked into their protection and guess what? They are only using ONE of Googleกs protections and that is the Javascript GetTime. They are still in Beta though and this may change, but who knows?
To the cheaters: The benefits of cheating are short. Eventually you will be caught for what you are doing and maybe even sued by Google. There is a ton of money to be made legally with Adsense and I suggest that you stop cheating. Who am I to tell you to stop? I use to be one of you! Back when I was 1314 I was making programs like the ones you guys are using now. You guys probably used one of my programs at one time. I am happy to say that those days of mine are all in the past now, and I am making a good amount of money LEGALLY with Adsense and other affiliate programs. Work hard guys and you will reap the benefits 100 times what you make cheating.
To the advertisers: You people that use Google Adwords now see that it is actually not very hard to cheat you out of your money, so be careful and MAKE SURE that you use a click fraud protection script such as ClickDefense. To lower most of your click fraud, just don’t put your ads in the Content Network, only stay on Googleกs sponsored search results. Only Google gets paid when someone clicks the search results sponsored ads and nobody wants to cheat to make Google anymore money do they? Check the stock, itกs currently at 279.58 a share.
To summarize my article I just want to state that no one should use this information for cheating Adsense and I am not responsible for your actions if you choose to do so. You will be caught because Google will evolve and get smarter, eventually.
About The Author
Joseph Tierney is the owner of http://www.stopauctionfraud.com A usergenerated database of auction fraudsters. He is 2005 high school graduate and is currently studying for a computer science degree in college.
This article was posted on September 01, 2005
by Joseph Tierney