Fraud started not too long after the rise of internet marketing. There are many small groups of people that are not very well structured at doing small frauds on their ads casually, but there are also larger ones, like a website contains a webmaster community in China.
The website, namely as cash888.net, Muzi Clicking alliance, produced a software ? Muzi clicking machine. In the features page, it is said to ?share Clicks?, ?raise traffic?, ?gain more from ads?.
Muzi is not like the old fraud system, in which it targeted Google Adsense and other kind of Clicking or viewing based ads, which might be one of these groups:
Self-Clicking:
A webmaster clicks his own ads. This can be found out easily.
Relative-Clicking:
The Webmaster encourages a site?s members, his family and his friends to click for him.
Award-Clicking:
The site offers awards to people who click the ads. For forums, it could be forum points, for web-based games, it could be superior items. For some sites they can even offer things with real values like an iPod.
Corporative Clicking:
Groups of people exchange clicks, like a group of webmasters click each other?s website. Normally it is gone in a small scale and can be traced by IP addresses.
Hacking:
Hacking can include clicking though proxies or finding a bug(s) in the system to cheat the system. Most of the time a bug in the system will be found and fixed, and the cheating person?s account is usually banned.
All of those types of fraud can have only a small amount damage and can be found as soon as the earning of one particular site goes too high. But cash888.net, possibly the world?s largest click scam community, combined all 5 ways of deception and organized in a way that each member will get out how much he put in.
These webmasters usually are equipped with these tools:
1. Alexa Toolbar (Increase alexa rank)
2. Muzi Auto Clicking machine(auto click ads)
3. Anti Virus software(Some site got Trojans)
4. A software that drops ADSL and reconnects again(dynamic IP)
5. Ram disk makes no use of hard disk
Basically, the whole system works by these steps:
1. Each webmaster opens the software, configures everything, including cap of how many clicks should be received in a day.
2. Open internet explorer and the auto clicking machine does everything
3. For each click and visit to other website, the user gains some amount of points. Each referral will generate 5% of the points toward the referrer.
4. Anyone who clicked or visited the users website, the user loses some amount of points. When there are any individuals have less than 10 points, no other user?s auto clicking program will visit that individual website.
This is already a simple but stunning system. Not many people could imagine a fraud system that could do this. More surprising is the users can go on the forum and learn techniques to counter the ad companies? inspection, making the clicker?s life easier.
For example, site owners usually add the function to rotate between different ads from different companies, so the clicks are spread evenly in many different services to make the fraud against individual ad companies harder to notice.
To survive from the ad companies? inspection, there are some techniques posted in the Muzi?s official forum showing the ways to be safe from banning account. Techniques include have more than one website, and to take money as soon as it meets the minimal amount so there will be no huge cash in the account and draw attention.
When communities like this grow, they will certainly hurt the ad publishers and the webmasters who do not participate in frauds. The ad companies have to find a way to stop things like this from happening, but the users in Muzi will certainly find a loophole of the ptp/cpm/ppc method of most ads companies, and have ways to avoid getting found out. It could stay hidden as long as the ad company does not produce a new way to advertise a product.
Jan Leuschner, a German teenager, believes the advertisers will know what to do when this happens. ?if the advertiser is smart enough, he will decide on whether the ad was useful or not. It (the market) regulates itself,? said Leuschner.

Editor Comment:

I certainly want to earn money from Google, but not by rip the rich off. I'm a Google fan and I know these people will not get away, someday, they will pay the price.