Ben Edelman: The Spyware - Click-Fraud Connection -- and Yahoo!'s Role Revisited

["Fergie" <fergdawg () netzero net>]

Ben Edelman is The Man (tm). ;-)

[snip]

In August I reported a startling number of notorious spyware programs receiving payments, directly or indirectly, from 
Yahoo!'s pay-per-click (PPC) (Overture) search system. Yahoo pays numerous other companies to show these ads via 
syndication relationships.

So when a spyware vendor can't find advertisers to buy its ad inventory directly, the spyware vendor can show Yahoo ads 
instead. Every time a user clicks on such an ad, the advertiser must pay Yahoo. Then Yahoo pays a revenue share to the 
spyware vendor that showed the ad. My August article documented relationships between Yahoo and 180solutions, Claria, 
Direct Revenue, eXact Advertising, IBIS, and SideFind.

My August article covered "just a few of the ... examples I have observed and recorded." Since then, my Yahoo-spyware 
collection has grown dramatically. I now have many dozens of different examples of Yahoo pay-per-click ads shown within 
spyware.

[snip]

Much, much more:
http://www.benedelman.org/news/040406-1.html

- ferg


--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg () netzero net or fergdawg () sbcglobal net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/


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