Well we have all heard of click fraud but we have a new term to deal with as of today.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft filed two lawsuits for “Click Laundering”, on Monday in federal court in Seattle against Eric C. Ralls and the company he founded, RedOrbit Inc., a Dallas science news and shopping site, plus 20 unnamed defendants (Johe Doe’s).
Microsoft claims RedOrbit engaged in “click laundering,” a term for making bogus clicks on third-party sites look like legitimate clicks on a publisher’s site, thus inflating ad revenue.
Microsoft also filed a similar suit against 20 unnamed “John Doe” defendants who allegedly committed click laundering through HelloMetro Inc., a network of online city guides based in Louisville, Ky. The company itself is not named as a defendant, and spokesman Clark Scott said the company did not engage in fraud and is cooperating fully with Microsoft.
Microsoft is seeking $250,000 in illicit profits and punitive damages.
Microsoft, says click laundering, is an offshoot of click fraud.
In the RedOrbit case, Microsoft says it discovered the alleged scheme after detecting a growing number of suspicious clicks from RedOrbit’s site over a two-week period starting in January 2009. The site had previously averaged 75 clicks a day, but the number spiked above 10,000 clicks per day, according to the complaint.
The journal writes that according to Microsoft, RedOrbit manufactured a large numbers of bogus clicks “”on shady sites known as parked domains—Web sites that are legal but exist only to display ads.””.
Microsoft says the clicks came from Bot-nets and from malware installed on PC’s.
Microsoft is going to take over the management all of the traffic from domains parked at Yahoo sometime this year.
John Daly is your choice for premium domains.