When Mice Attack Internet scammers steal money with 'click fraud.' By Brad Stone Newsweek Jan. 24 issue - Assaf Nehoray's online ad campaign bogged down in Germany. The European businessman runs a Web marketplace for cargo firms; for the last two years he has attracted customers to his site by putting ad links on the major search engines. The model worked perfectly�until last summer. When he tried to expand into Germany, Nehoray found that his site was getting lots of new visitors but unusually few paying customers. Nehoray (who prefers we don't name his company) analyzed his Internet logs and made an unsettling discovery. Someone�perhaps a competitor�had written a simple software program that relentlessly clicked on his ads, burning up his ad budget and pushing his links off the search sites by lunchtime each day. After spending weeks complaining to Google about the problem and getting a partial refund, he finally yanked the ads. "It was really bad," he says, estimating that he lost $50,000 in potential business. "Nobody knows how to solve this problem." more @

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