Google AdSense

2020: Racketeers began to threaten with bad traffic

In February, 2020 there was a new scheme of racketing by e-mail which is directed to owners of the websites placing advertizing banners in the Google AdSense program. Racketeers threaten owners of the websites to flood their bot-tratfikom that automated systems of Google on fight against fraud blocked their account, having deprived of users of income from advertizing.

The KrebsOnSecurity company dealing with problems of cyber security learned from one of the victims about a new type of fraud. It is said in the statement that "demonstration of advertizing from your account will be blocked, and all income will be returned to advertisers. Means, the profit source from your website will be temporarily suspended. AdSense will be required about a month to remove a limit on advertizing, but even in that case we will again easily hammer your website with low-standard web traffic that will lead to the repeated ban from AdSense - this time probably forever!"

Racketeers threaten owners of the websites to flood their bot-tratfikom that automated systems of Google

The racketeer demanded to transfer it bitcoins for the amount of $5000 in order to avoid cyber attack. In this swindle racketeers probably stake on the fact that a number of owners will consider the similar amount as cheaper alternative, than disappearance of income from advertizing.

The owner of the website who shared the letter noted that he originally considered the message of the racketeer by unreasonable threat, however the overview of the last statistics of traffic AdSense showed significant growth of undesirable traffic. Google estimates it as "the demonstrations generated by owners" and also as "the automated instruments of clicks or sources of traffic", and therefore blocks. Google also claims that it uses various tools for protection against inadmissible traffic and that its most part is filtered before similar process affects the advertiser or the owner of the website.^[1]

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