Killing a Websites Adsense earning by creating click spikes.

[mystd]

I've been thinking of making a website and did some research. What I found was kind of scary, it seems that adsense closes accounts that get too many clicks (spikes). I've seen posts from website owners that lost money in 5 digits. What immediately came to mind is that it would be easy to make a software that does this. It would be easy to "kill" the competition by removing their income if it relies on ads. Do I need to be aware of such things when making my website? Is there already software like this out on the web? If my website is successful and somebody decides its too successful, how can I protect myself against such an attack.

[iTpHo3NiX]

This is actually a pretty nice attack method that I'm surprised MPAA hasn't tried. Create a clickbot with a randomizing IP from scraped proxies and kill monetization of websites. Y r we not funding this!

[kenjoe41]

Protecting yourself might get alittle tricky here, i am not much of a webz programmer but i can't think of alot of things a clever programmer can't bypass with some bit of randomisation. Like useragent, timing of the clicks, what parts of the site are accessed, IP, etc. Guess some more consultation with these web guys is needed.

[sh4d0w_w4tch]

My suggestion is to get the account owner's own browser information and put it into the script and go through a popular VPN to make it look like he started spamming clicks from his browser while on a VPN to try to hide his plan.

As far as defending against these attacks goes, it's pretty difficult from what I hear.  I wouldn't even bother with AdSense.  If you have any reasonably trafficked then you should get advertisers to pay you over PayPal and put up ads manually.

[nozzlechunks]

WHOA, I don't know if it's this site's font or my resolution, but I was convinced this thread was about dick spikes and dickbots. I was sadly dissapointed.

[Phage]

My suggestion is to get the account owner's own browser information and put it into the script and go through a popular VPN to make it look like he started spamming clicks from his browser while on a VPN to try to hide his plan.

As far as defending against these attacks goes, it's pretty difficult from what I hear.  I wouldn't even bother with AdSense.  If you have any reasonably trafficked then you should get advertisers to pay you over PayPal and put up ads manually.

This is the only 'attack' I'd backup.

Yes, Google is known to close down AdSense users who are profiting too much of this. What I don't get though, is why you want to help the guy? Yes, his account will eventually be closed, but before that happens he's going to profit a lot from your 'attack'. I'd say you're doing him a favour.

[iTpHo3NiX]

This is the only 'attack' I'd backup.

Yes, Google is known to close down AdSense users who are profiting too much of this. What I don't get though, is why you want to help the guy? Yes, his account will eventually be closed, but before that happens he's going to profit a lot from your 'attack'. I'd say you're doing him a favour.

Not true, Google is pretty good about not paying out. If you sit there for a couple of days with constant clicks on his ads from the same or a few different ips, Google is going to catch on fairly quickly.

Best thing to do, look up click bots and tutorials and when they say DO NOT, definitely do :-P

[sh4d0w_w4tch]

That's true.  If all the clicks are coming from the same IP address then Google is going to catch on.  I recommend using a VPN company so it will look more like the webmaster signed up for a VPN and started spamming clicks.

There are people who have a large source of income from web ads and I don't want to ruin their jobs, but there are also entitled assholes out there who act like massive douchebags towards users who disable JavaScript.  They go off not just on users using ad blockers but any user who makes the intelligent decision not to use JavaScript except on a few select websites.

I'm sure any website that gets a lot of visitors can profit from manually selling image based ads over Bitcoin or Paypal.  You can charge for the ad to be up for a period of time and not need to worry about clicks.