Russian cybergang scored millions in fake-ad scam

Now we have yet another "Russian" scam being reported !!

An online ad fraud company claims something called *Methbot* is responsible for billions of dollars in so-called ad theft.

They do it by using well known names for websites and somehow gets people to view.

Sounds like another side show to make people believe something that may not exist.

But maybe it does anyway.

Report: Russian cybergang scored millions in fake-ad scam

A Russian criminal group is running a massive fraud that has been siphoning off millions of digital advertising dollars a day for a couple of months, a firm that specializes in detecting online-ad fraud says.

The scam may have cost brands, and potentially media companies, hundreds of millions of dollars.

The New York-based firm White Ops said in a Wednesday report that the "Methbot" scam made it appear that hundreds of thousands of people, mostly in the U.S., were watching real video ads from real companies on more than 6,000 fake websites that mimicked well-known publishers, including CNN, ESPN, Vogue and The New York Times. Nobody was actually watching.

The criminal ring's gains come out of the pockets of companies paying for digital ads and also, potentially, of the websites that could have hosted those ads.

Now they are hacking to overthrow our economy!!

Oh noes!!!

RETURN HACK!

RETURN HACK!

I"m always a little suspicious when the company breaking a story also develops and sells related solutions.

White Ops is a global leader in advertising fraud protection and offers verification and optimization solutions to the advertising industry

But in this case, it looks like they are giving away all of their research they found via their customer base in order to help stop the problem, so that's pretty cool.

They made a program to watch commercials knowing full well that companies pay-per-view for people to watch them.

Now, that doesn't make them any money, but it costs the advertising companies money.

I don't even see anything wrong with this, but I'm sure it's just one more piece of potentially real news blown way out of proportion to assist in the start-a-war-with-russia agenda.

a reply to: xuenchen

This type of fraud has been around forever. Its nothing new and i would say thousands of people do it across the world.

a reply to: lordcomac

Now, that doesn't make them any money, but it costs the advertising companies money.

I think you missed something. They were obviously signed up with the ad network(s) involved and were getting paid per fake view.

originally posted by: theantediluvian
a reply to: lordcomac

Now, that doesn't make them any money, but it costs the advertising companies money.

I think you missed something. They were obviously signed up with the ad network(s) involved and were getting paid per fake view.

Right they were running the sites getting paid for running ads, and also were viewing and clicking the ads with other bots.

They had to make their sites look legitimate to the advertising networks. This is actually kind of impressive in a way, they basically back engineered and figured out how to fool the advertising networks into believing their sites were legit and in fact superior when in reality they were garbage, and they also convinced them fake viewers were legit. That is not a small undertaking. In fact I really wonder if they didn't have inside info from programmers who built the ad networks on how to beat them.

But, if they have really taken in this much money it was obviously time and money well spent.

What I don't understand is why these people have the need to run this same scam for months. I mean how much money does someone really need, especially when it will be hard to spend large amounts without it raising a lot of suspicion. It seems like greed is always what brings them down.

a reply to: xuenchen

Just found out Darth Vader is Russian too !!!

beh... Russian this and Russian that... CNN news at it's finest.

One thing nobody seems to mention is that whenever an article like this is released, the amounts they list are often inflated significantly. Hundreds of millions is incredibly unbelievable. A real figure is closer to maybe a million or two. Kinda the same principle that cops use when they state a 'street value'. No where close to reality. . .it is hype.