Lawsuit Alleges New “Bang Box” Click Fraud Scheme
Scott Boyenger, CEO of Click Defense (www.clickdefense.com), today announced that Click Defense has independently confirmed log files associated with the “Bang Box” click fraud criminal complaint case #2005-037331 -- filed by Advanced Internet Technologies, Inc. (AIT – www.ait.com) against the Fayetteville Publishing Company (FPC) -- and the lawsuit where FPC sued to get its servers back and AIT countersued alleging click fraud, unfair and deceptive trade practices and breach of contract. File No: 06 CVS 67 Superior Court, Cumberland County, North Carolina.
(PRWEB) May 9, 2007 -- Scott Boyenger, CEO of Click Defense (www.clickdefense.com), today announced that Click Defense has independently confirmed log files associated with the “Bang Box” click fraud criminal complaint case #2005-037331 -- filed by Advanced Internet Technologies, Inc. (AIT – www.ait.com) against the Fayetteville Publishing Company (FPC) -- and the lawsuit where FPC sued to get its servers back and AIT countersued alleging click fraud, unfair and deceptive trade practices and breach of contract. File No: 06 CVS 67 Superior Court, Cumberland County, North Carolina.
“We received the logs from Web hosting company AIT, and it appeared to us that this traffic is repetitive and manufactured,” Boyenger said. Click Defense is a company specializing in combating click fraud and obtaining refunds for clients.
The complaint and subsequent counter-claim lawsuit alleges that the manufactured traffic's sole intent is to drive up the number of impressions thus driving up the bid price for PPC advertising through the search engines and Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) members. Additionally, the lawsuit and discovery allege that many of the clicks made across the PPC ads were done so without even loading the designated website.
“The type of click fraud alleged in this lawsuit is new and very clever,” Boyenger said. “The traffic patterns and IP addresses blend with the ISP’s address space and make it appear like legitimate traffic.
According to the case filings, FPC co-located its servers in AIT’s Data Center for years and was being fed advertiser ads from search engines, syndicates, and other IAB members to its Web site. It alleges that FPC hired a third-party to rent a web server inside AIT’s Data Center in order to click on the ads without generating suspicious external traffic patterns.
The lawsuit and criminal complaints filed with the Fayetteville Police Department were escalated to the NC SBI and FBI allege that AIT was able to monitor Web traffic to and from the Fayetteville Observers Web site and that up to 80 percent of it could be potentially manufactured.
The complaint and counter-claim filing also allege that AIT, like many other local and national advertisers, spent a significant amount of advertising dollars on the Fayetteville Observer's web site, especially in the form of print advertising as many print ads were tied to the online ads for advertisers.
AIT's Chief Information Officer, Michael Roberts said, "This whole lawsuit came about when we (AIT) grew suspicious that we were being over-billed for advertising."
Clarence Briggs, CEO and Founder of AIT said he has compiled a list of both national and local advertisers who conducted business with FPC. Briggs said he suggests those advertisers use third-party experts, such as Click Defense which is a well-respected company in the field of Web analytics, to determine if they are victims of this latest scam.
"We were very surprised when AIT contacted us and we met with their attorneys," said Laura Mussler, a local restaurant owner.
Briggs will be the keynote speaker at ISPCON this year, www.ispcon.com/conference/keynotes.php. ISPCON is the capstone event for the Internet industry. Briggs says he intends to use the information alleged in the lawsuit to illustrate the anatomy of click fraud from the search engines and syndicates down to local publishers.
"We are going to put the entire civil lawsuit and discovery online since it is public domain information anyway," said Briggs. "As well as resume our criminal complaint. People need to know the truth and get educated."
AIT is the company that led the class action lawsuit against Google. AIT has also worked with the FBI and Senate Judiciary Committee regarding Click Fraud and its potential ties to funding organized crime and terrorism. AIT started the Click Fraud portal www.igeryon.org as a non-profit clearing house to address the issue.
The criminal complaint filed by AIT against FPC is located there along with sample sniffer logs, photos and some advertisers who might have been victims of the Bang Box Click Fraud scenario.
###
Post Comment:
Trackback URL: http://www.prweb.com/pingpr.php/U2luZy1TdW1tLVByb2YtUHJvZi1NYWduLVplcm8=
Bookmark -
Del.icio.us |
Digg |
Furl It |
Spurl |
RawSugar |
Simpy |
Shadows |
Blink It |
My Web
|
Share The News
Submit this press release easily to any of these major bookmarking and social media sites.