Business Week has a very telling article on click fraud: the dark side of online advertising.

The article reveals how a parasitic underground has developed around internet advertising.

See also the click fraud slideshow and botnet slideshow.

ClickMonkey: a click fraud example

A chilling example is ClickMonkey, a company specializing in just clicking on ads. They claim they have 20,000 "monkeys" clicking on ads from an offshore ship. Each monkey has three computers, and the connection cycles through various ISPs.

1 monkey x 1 hour = 720 page views/clicks

1 monkey x 1 day = 17,280 page views/clicks

5,000 monkeys x 1 day 86,400,000 page views/clicks!!!!

It is hard for me to believe that 20,000 people and 60,000 computers can fit in a ship. How many cables have to be run, and how many hubs and routers? How much power would be needed, and how much would heat dissipation be? How many washrooms are there?

Discussion

You can read the Slashdot discussion for some interesting comments.