Cyberjihad: Islamists using Google to raise money for Hezbollah?
posted at 10:24 am on December 7, 2006 by Allahpundit
1. Groups set up blogs and sites with Google AdSense ads
2. Commit click fraud on those sites
3. Collect revenue from Google
4. Donate revenue to ‘charities’ which funnel to terror groups
Where are they setting up these blogs? At Orkut, Google’s answer to MySpace.
I’m sympathetic to the argument that they’re not responsible for the content of their users, but my sympathy wanes with each new $50 billion increment in valuation they celebrate. When do they start hiring people to police Orkut and YouTube aggressively for enemy propaganda? When their shares hit $600? $700?
The Jawa boys and Aaron Weisburd would probably do it for free.
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
It’s not surprising. It’s very easy to police these sites, because Google cannot identify what clicks are illegal, especially if you’ve got thousands of Jihadists around the WORLD, clicking their site Ads.
Right Tracker on December 7, 2006 at 10:30 AM
Make that, it’s NOT VERY EASY…In fact, it’s darn near impossible!
Right Tracker on December 7, 2006 at 10:31 AM
Are you kidding me???? GOOGLE NOT KNOW??
My proud and over eager mother got on my site (on MY computer) for about TEN minutes before I realized what she was doing and clicked away like a moron monkey on meth.
They jerked my ads within twenty-four hours! NOTHING I could tell them would make them change their minds. LIBERALS RUN GOOGLE. My content probably had NOOoooooooothing at all to do with their lack of mercy. Nope. Nothin’.
seejanemom on December 7, 2006 at 10:46 AM
sorry…meant to say my FABULOUS, SHAMELESSLY CONSERVATIVE AND ORIGINAL content on my site.
seejanemom on December 7, 2006 at 10:49 AM
Actually, all the Jihadis would have to do would be to apply to Google for a grant or something and they’d get the money straight out.
ahem on December 7, 2006 at 11:01 AM
Allah, this better be some kind of a bad joke. I had Google Adsense, my friends clicked a few times a day (trying to help) and I was kicked out. Some cyber-jihadist S.O.B. terrorist does the same and collects money?
amerpundit on December 7, 2006 at 11:10 AM
After I typed my comment, I read seejanemom’s. My experience was similar, but it was done on other computers. Here’s the thing. Google analyzes clicks, sees if too many came from one place, and even if that one place isn’t your IP, kicks your butt out.
amerpundit on December 7, 2006 at 11:12 AM
ameripundit, quite right. If they distribute a list of sites that a single clicker can go to and click through the ads on, and then you multiply that by a bunch of people doing it, that’s much less obvious. Still, it shouldn’t be too terribly difficult to trace IP’s that do an inordinate amount of clicking on Google ads and correlate them to the sites those clicks originate on, especially if you try to detect a pattern of IP that click on the same combinations of links.
They can stop this if they want to, but it would seem to be a moneymaker for Google too, since ad buyers/destination sites would not have enough of incoming traffic data to spot the patterns. But Google certainly does.
Pablo on December 7, 2006 at 11:23 AM
Is there a video for that on U-Tube?
E L Frederick (Sniper One) on December 7, 2006 at 11:29 AM
You sound more like “the boss” everyday.
THeDRiFTeR on December 7, 2006 at 11:33 AM
If a million monkeys on meth click on Google ads an infinite number of times, they’ll corner the market on enhancement pills.
Attila (Pillage Idiot) on December 7, 2006 at 11:34 AM
As usual, there are a few (isLAMEolovers) who just have to spoil a good thing for everyone else. That’s why I (shameless plug) use ask.com.
tormod on December 7, 2006 at 11:35 AM
Click fraud is easy to detect in some instances, such as the one amerpundit pointed out in the above post. Logging IP’s and counting the clicks from one location is easily enough done. However, if cyber-jihadis are using a wide spred botnet and instructing thousands of hosts to click away in a fashion that appears to be random to the adsense counter-fraud algorithm… Well, that’s another story altogether.
Want to fight this?
Secure your computer, and all computers on your network.
And folks, this isn’t limited to an enterprise network. The most compromised machines are home computers with persistent high-speed internet connections. Does Grandma have a cable modem? If so, she might be financing terror while completely unaware.
It’s a pain. It’s not simple. It can be expensive in time and resources. It’s extremely difficult to keep on top of, especially for a lay-person. But it is everyone’s responsibility as a computer owner to make sure that someone else is not using your spare computing cycles to commit click fraud, or god-forbid, launch a DOS attack against the DOD.
If you are the type who frequents hotair, you likely have an interest in keeping this country safe. This is something we can ALL do in order to limit the enemy’s ability to use our resources against us.
If someone compromises your home computer, you no longer own it. In this case, you may as well write a check and make it out to “Mr. Terrorist.” Doing nothing empowers these “people” to do a host of horrible things.
This is not something Google can fix. This is something we, as responsible netziens, must do for ourselves.
The links above are random picks. I will look for a decent guide to self-securing and post it here. In the meantime, be aware, and take any steps you can.
JunkCoast on December 7, 2006 at 12:21 PM
It was interesting to me to read the experiences people had with AdSense on their site being yanked after just a few bad clicks.
I work for a Search Engine Marketing company. We do the media buys for companies that want to advertise on Google/Yahoo/Others.
As part of our service, we check the logs to search for fraudulent clicks. Obviously, our clients don’t want to pay for clicks they received from people just clicking on ads to make money for their site (or for their jihad). Even when we go to Google with solid evidence of fraud, it is a pain in the butt to get them to admit it. Most of the time, they do an internal review and decide that no fraud was involved. It rarely matters how convincing our evidence is.
It’s nice to know they’re so busy policing the ads on conservative sites that they don’t have time to even review the evidence we put together for them.
JadeNYU on December 7, 2006 at 3:56 PM
I’ve never put AdSense on my site, but, isn’t one of its selling points the fact that the ads will always be relevant to the content of your site?
If that’s the case, Google already admits that they are ‘scanning’ the content so the ads they place there will match. Perhaps they should have their system put up a red flag when the ad displayed is:
Looking for Paradise?
Buy our instant martyr belt.
We’ll throw in 72 virgins FREE!
JadeNYU on December 7, 2006 at 6:21 PM
This doesn’t even make any sense!
Orkut ads only profit Google, NOT anyone else.
The Search Engine Journal got this one wrong, and it is sad to see Hot Air fall for a typical MSM mistake. Grrr…
Darnell Clayton on December 7, 2006 at 9:09 PM