digital ad fraud is as rampant as ever; new ripples caused by privacy regulations are starting to affect the market. and more BS from trade associations pretending to be doing something
FouAnalytics is an alternative to Google Analytics, but with fraud and bot detection baked in. Marketers can use FouAnalytics to look at their own campaigns, find the domains and apps that are eating up their budgets fraudulently, and turn them off, while the campaign is still running. How does that compare to your blackbox fraud detection that just gives you a percent IVT number?
marketers assume their digital marketing is working as expected; but if they looked more closely at analytics, they may see that some of those assumptions are not valid -- i.e. they are not getting what they thought they paid for. Take a closer look yourself.
FouAnalytics - site analytics and media analytics for practitioners to detect fraud and take action themselves - on-site tags and in-ad tags measure sites and ad impressions, respectively
In 2021 some marketers are still asking whether ad fraud is real and whether it is pervasive. This serves as a simple reminder of some of the evidence collected over the years.
digital ad fraud is as rampant as ever; new ripples caused by privacy regulations are starting to affect the market. and more BS from trade associations pretending to be doing something
FouAnalytics is an alternative to Google Analytics, but with fraud and bot detection baked in. Marketers can use FouAnalytics to look at their own campaigns, find the domains and apps that are eating up their budgets fraudulently, and turn them off, while the campaign is still running. How does that compare to your blackbox fraud detection that just gives you a percent IVT number?
marketers assume their digital marketing is working as expected; but if they looked more closely at analytics, they may see that some of those assumptions are not valid -- i.e. they are not getting what they thought they paid for. Take a closer look yourself.
FouAnalytics - site analytics and media analytics for practitioners to detect fraud and take action themselves - on-site tags and in-ad tags measure sites and ad impressions, respectively
In 2021 some marketers are still asking whether ad fraud is real and whether it is pervasive. This serves as a simple reminder of some of the evidence collected over the years.
why do hackers hack? of course, it's fun for them. But they hack to make tons of money with their unique skillset. How does hacking connect to ad fraud? Here are a few examples.
How many of these hidden costs were you aware of?
Without even talking about digital ad fraud, there are other costs in the digital ad supply path that eat up most of every dollar that advertisers spend in digital. There are known costs of 60 - 70% extracted by adtech middlemen.
putting aside ad fraud for a moment, what's the elephant in the room? we're talking about your digital marketing. Do you think it is working? How do you know?
The original idea of the digital media trust collaborative is was sharing threat intelligence to more quickly remove fraudulent domains and apps from media buys.
from the IAB FY 2019 advertising revenue report, we show that CPM and CPC ads represent 92% of all digital spend; these are the favorite targets of fraudters
Marketers can look in their own analytics and detailed reports to identify ad fraud and clean it up. There is little need to use 3rd party fraud detection tech that is proven to not work.
Previous studies that addressed the impact of losing third party (“3P”) cookies on ad revenue did not clearly differentiate between the impact on ad tech intermediaries versus on publishers. Instead of “advertiser CPMs” (what advertisers pay) this study uses “media CPMs” (what the publishers get) to better isolate the impact of tracking vs no tracking on publishers.
Ellen Pao was right. I have seen and documented the fake stuff since at least 2013. In digital, virtually unlimited fake accounts, fake traffic, fake users, fake ad impressions, etc. can be created. How many of the 50 slides in this deck were you familiar with?
Digital ad fraud is as rampant as other forms of fraud in other industries. what are some ways to think about prioritizing solving digital ad fraud, relative to other digital marketing activities that advertisers can spend money on?
“In addition to the ad fraud itself, bad guys make money by selling the “picks and shovels” too – e.g. bots, traffic, clicks, malware, fake apps, etc. They have an entire ecosystem to extract value. What follows are just a few examples, scratching the surface.”
Everyone is paying for fraud detection, but without enough technical knowledge, they don't realize the fraud detection doesn't work or is easily tricked by the bad guys. So what's worse is that the people paying for fraud detection have a false sense of security and take their eyes off of the obvious fraud that is still getting through.
Ad fraud steals ad budgets and negatively impacts the class action notice industry - ads are not put in front of humans, but instead are shown to bots (software programs that load webpages). Bot don't complete claim forms; humans do.
Despite the use of fraud detection technologies, notice providers should use "best practicable" actions to verify the campaign analytics to see if ad fraud still gets through.
Ad fraud is very bad. But no matter how big the number reported, brands often don't think it affects them -- i.e. it's someone elses' problem. Here are 3 case studies of marketers taking a look for themselves and solving ad fraud by putting in place best practices and processes to continuously monitor and reduce fraud, without using fraud detection tech.
Do you think fraud detection tech works? Consider this. Bad guys are hackers. They have better tech and are always 1 step ahead of good guys trying to detect and catch them.
Here are some questions to ask of fraud detection vendors so you can tell if you are getting ripped off and if they can actually do what they claim to be doing.
why do hackers hack? of course, it's fun for them. But they hack to make tons of money with their unique skillset. How does hacking connect to ad fraud? Here are a few examples.
How many of these hidden costs were you aware of?
Without even talking about digital ad fraud, there are other costs in the digital ad supply path that eat up most of every dollar that advertisers spend in digital. There are known costs of 60 - 70% extracted by adtech middlemen.
putting aside ad fraud for a moment, what's the elephant in the room? we're talking about your digital marketing. Do you think it is working? How do you know?
The original idea of the digital media trust collaborative is was sharing threat intelligence to more quickly remove fraudulent domains and apps from media buys.
from the IAB FY 2019 advertising revenue report, we show that CPM and CPC ads represent 92% of all digital spend; these are the favorite targets of fraudters
Marketers can look in their own analytics and detailed reports to identify ad fraud and clean it up. There is little need to use 3rd party fraud detection tech that is proven to not work.
Previous studies that addressed the impact of losing third party (“3P”) cookies on ad revenue did not clearly differentiate between the impact on ad tech intermediaries versus on publishers. Instead of “advertiser CPMs” (what advertisers pay) this study uses “media CPMs” (what the publishers get) to better isolate the impact of tracking vs no tracking on publishers.
Ellen Pao was right. I have seen and documented the fake stuff since at least 2013. In digital, virtually unlimited fake accounts, fake traffic, fake users, fake ad impressions, etc. can be created. How many of the 50 slides in this deck were you familiar with?
Digital ad fraud is as rampant as other forms of fraud in other industries. what are some ways to think about prioritizing solving digital ad fraud, relative to other digital marketing activities that advertisers can spend money on?
“In addition to the ad fraud itself, bad guys make money by selling the “picks and shovels” too – e.g. bots, traffic, clicks, malware, fake apps, etc. They have an entire ecosystem to extract value. What follows are just a few examples, scratching the surface.”
Everyone is paying for fraud detection, but without enough technical knowledge, they don't realize the fraud detection doesn't work or is easily tricked by the bad guys. So what's worse is that the people paying for fraud detection have a false sense of security and take their eyes off of the obvious fraud that is still getting through.
Ad fraud steals ad budgets and negatively impacts the class action notice industry - ads are not put in front of humans, but instead are shown to bots (software programs that load webpages). Bot don't complete claim forms; humans do.
Despite the use of fraud detection technologies, notice providers should use "best practicable" actions to verify the campaign analytics to see if ad fraud still gets through.
Ad fraud is very bad. But no matter how big the number reported, brands often don't think it affects them -- i.e. it's someone elses' problem. Here are 3 case studies of marketers taking a look for themselves and solving ad fraud by putting in place best practices and processes to continuously monitor and reduce fraud, without using fraud detection tech.
Do you think fraud detection tech works? Consider this. Bad guys are hackers. They have better tech and are always 1 step ahead of good guys trying to detect and catch them.
Here are some questions to ask of fraud detection vendors so you can tell if you are getting ripped off and if they can actually do what they claim to be doing.
There are 2 main forms of mobile fraud - display ad fraud and install fraud. This deck focuses on the far more lucrative and larger form - mobile display fraud.
Publishers applied all sorts of ad tech to their sites and experimented with everything in an attempt to increase ad revenue. But some things didn't turn out the way they expected. In fact, some of these actions led to counterintuitive results - loss of revenue, loss of audience, lower CPMs, ad fraud, and other ills. Have you experienced any of these?
Digital ad fraud is not illegal because there are not laws against it yet. But it is very similar to other crimes for which there are laws -- e.g. counterfeit goods, computer crimes, etc.
Procurement can play a crucial role in fighting ad fraud; by helping marketers to move away from easily faked quantity metrics, to real business outcome metrics. And also removing misaligned incentives - like buying ultra low cost CPM inventory.
The "Badtech Industrial Complex" was built on "surveillance marketing" which comes from the misguided notions of the long tail, hypertargeting, and behavioral targeting. Ad tech and supporting services were designed with a singular goal - to extract as much value as possible from the digital marketing supply chain.
A new balance is required for the future of the Internet.
Digital ad fraud funds cybercrime. And cybercrime, in turn, leads to more ad fraud. There is an entire ecosystem set up to steal from the large pool of dollars -- $100 billion spent in digital in the U.S. per year, and $300 billion in digital worldwide.
Digital ad fraud has not only NOT gone down; it has actually gone up in certain cases. There are some improvements when companies make special efforts. Ad blocking is also emerging as a threat.
Digital ad fraud continues to increase, as more ad dollars shift into digital. This is a recap of current forms of ad fraud and current techniques and technologies being used to combat it.
Advertisers have deployed technology and relied on new industry standards to reduce wasted ad spend due to fraud and low viewability. But have those actually worked to drive up RoAS (return on ad spend)? Research data suggests that there are still high amounts of ad fraud that remains to be cleaned up and that the fake traffic, impressions, and clicks further corrupt the analytics that advertisers use to measure the success of their campaigns. Hear practical recommendations from Dr. Augustine Fou, independent cybersecurity and ad fraud researcher, on how to measure and mitigate ad fraud using high tech tools and low tech techniques.
Much more data and case studies included. Good advertisers and good publishers are making significant headway against fraud that impacts their own businesses. This cannot be said more generally of the broader digital advertising ecosystem where fraud remains rampant, because it is allowed to be.
how the money flows from the advertisers through the ad tech intermediaries to longtail, fraud, and fake sites, with the help of botnets and traffic sellers
bad guys started with fake websites, then moved to loading ads only to save time and bandwidth; now they are simply faking bid requests and flooding exchanges
most buyers who buy in programmatic channels think they are getting enormous "reach" -- i.e. their ads are shown on many sites; but this data shows the exact opposite is true. Their ads are being shown on a small number of sites (less than 1,000); the buyers might as well have bought more direct from good publishers.
Using Google Analytics to find abnormal traffic and fraud; this is a how-to, to get hourly charts instead of daily rolled-up or averaged data, which hides the fraud.
When marketers buy from good publishers and pay HIGHER CPMs, they get better outcomes and marketing efficiency, despite the higher CPM. This is because there are human audiences that visit those good publishers' sites.
Data from FouAnalytics, on-site measurement and in-ad measurement was compared to DBM exchange data for 26 exchanges, 7.5 trillion impressions (30 day period) to analyze browser market share -- specifically Safari/iOS.
Findings include: 1) bots pretending to be Safari/iOS outnumber real Safari users 5 to 1, and 2) there is a 1.5X average surplus of Safari impressions available on exchanges compared to unique cookies.
2.Cellular Networks_The final stage of connectivity is achieved by segmenting...JeyaPerumal1
A cellular network, frequently referred to as a mobile network, is a type of communication system that enables wireless communication between mobile devices. The final stage of connectivity is achieved by segmenting the comprehensive service area into several compact zones, each called a cell.
Understanding User Behavior with Google Analytics.pdfSEO Article Boost
Unlocking the full potential of Google Analytics is crucial for understanding and optimizing your website’s performance. This guide dives deep into the essential aspects of Google Analytics, from analyzing traffic sources to understanding user demographics and tracking user engagement.
Traffic Sources Analysis:
Discover where your website traffic originates. By examining the Acquisition section, you can identify whether visitors come from organic search, paid campaigns, direct visits, social media, or referral links. This knowledge helps in refining marketing strategies and optimizing resource allocation.
User Demographics Insights:
Gain a comprehensive view of your audience by exploring demographic data in the Audience section. Understand age, gender, and interests to tailor your marketing strategies effectively. Leverage this information to create personalized content and improve user engagement and conversion rates.
Tracking User Engagement:
Learn how to measure user interaction with your site through key metrics like bounce rate, average session duration, and pages per session. Enhance user experience by analyzing engagement metrics and implementing strategies to keep visitors engaged.
Conversion Rate Optimization:
Understand the importance of conversion rates and how to track them using Google Analytics. Set up Goals, analyze conversion funnels, segment your audience, and employ A/B testing to optimize your website for higher conversions. Utilize ecommerce tracking and multi-channel funnels for a detailed view of your sales performance and marketing channel contributions.
Custom Reports and Dashboards:
Create custom reports and dashboards to visualize and interpret data relevant to your business goals. Use advanced filters, segments, and visualization options to gain deeper insights. Incorporate custom dimensions and metrics for tailored data analysis. Integrate external data sources to enrich your analytics and make well-informed decisions.
This guide is designed to help you harness the power of Google Analytics for making data-driven decisions that enhance website performance and achieve your digital marketing objectives. Whether you are looking to improve SEO, refine your social media strategy, or boost conversion rates, understanding and utilizing Google Analytics is essential for your success.
Italy Agriculture Equipment Market Outlook to 2027harveenkaur52
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1.Wireless Communication System_Wireless communication is a broad term that i...JeyaPerumal1
Wireless communication involves the transmission of information over a distance without the help of wires, cables or any other forms of electrical conductors.
Wireless communication is a broad term that incorporates all procedures and forms of connecting and communicating between two or more devices using a wireless signal through wireless communication technologies and devices.
Features of Wireless Communication
The evolution of wireless technology has brought many advancements with its effective features.
The transmitted distance can be anywhere between a few meters (for example, a television's remote control) and thousands of kilometers (for example, radio communication).
Wireless communication can be used for cellular telephony, wireless access to the internet, wireless home networking, and so on.
Meet up Milano 14 _ Axpo Italia_ Migration from Mule3 (On-prem) to.pdfFlorence Consulting
Quattordicesimo Meetup di Milano, tenutosi a Milano il 23 Maggio 2024 dalle ore 17:00 alle ore 18:30 in presenza e da remoto.
Abbiamo parlato di come Axpo Italia S.p.A. ha ridotto il technical debt migrando le proprie APIs da Mule 3.9 a Mule 4.4 passando anche da on-premises a CloudHub 1.0.
Meet up Milano 14 _ Axpo Italia_ Migration from Mule3 (On-prem) to.pdf
What CFEs can do about digital ad fraud
1. August 2020 / Page 0marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
linkedin.com/in/augustinefou
What CFEs Can Do
About Digital Ad Fraud
August 2020
Augustine Fou, PhD.
acfou [at] mktsci.com
2. August 2020 / Page 1marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
linkedin.com/in/augustinefou
Who am I?
• I am a digital marketer of 23+ years
• I investigate digital ad fraud
• I help clients audit campaigns for
fraud that gets by verification tech
• I show clients the data, teach them
how to find/reduce fraud themselves
3. August 2020 / Page 2marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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What is Ad Fraud?
4. August 2020 / Page 3marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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What is digital ad fraud?
ad impressions shown to
bots/software not to humans
ad fraud
5. August 2020 / Page 4marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
linkedin.com/in/augustinefou
Two main types of ad fraud
Ad Fraud = impressions and clicks
caused by bots, not by humans
Impression Fraud
(CPM) Fraud
(includes mobile display, video ads)
Click Fraud
(CPC) Fraud
(includes mobile search ads)
6. August 2020 / Page 5marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
linkedin.com/in/augustinefou
How bad guys commit ad fraud
1. set up
FAKE SITES
2. buy
FAKE TRAFFIC
3. sell
FAKE ADS
7. August 2020 / Page 6marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
linkedin.com/in/augustinefou
Why is ad fraud bad?
Advertisers Publishers
Bad Guys
1/3
2/3
Ads are not shown
to humans, wasted
ad dollars
Ad revenue declines
because dollars are
stolen by bad guys.
Steal money using fake
ads; siphon dollars out
of ecosystem.
8. August 2020 / Page 7marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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How Big is Ad Fraud?
9. August 2020 / Page 8marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Everyone has an opinion…
Ads fraud is
“non-existent”
– IAB Australia
“Ad fraud is $6.5
billion or 9% of
display ad spend”
-- ANA/WhiteOps
“88% - 98% of clicks
are generated by
bots”
- Oxford Biochron
… but no one knows
10. August 2020 / Page 9marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
linkedin.com/in/augustinefou
Overall fraud is more than just bots
Sites and apps that cheat may look fine in bot detection reports
1.3% + 57% = 58%
bot fraud site/app fraud overall fraud
bot detection sees this
bot detection misses this
11. August 2020 / Page 10marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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(look at the evidence)
12. August 2020 / Page 11marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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New “largest ever” botnet every year
Vast botnets targeting high-value video ads, disguising/hiding
13. August 2020 / Page 12marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Millions of apps on millions of phones
Big companies openly committing fraud; in-app is far less measurable
October 2018
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/
article/craigsilverman/how-a-
massive-ad-fraud-scheme-
exploited-android-phones-to
November 2018
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/
article/craigsilverman/android-
apps-cheetah-mobile-kika-
kochava-ad-fraud
March 2019
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/
article/craigsilverman/in-banner-
video-ad-fraud
April 2019
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/
article/craigsilverman/google-
play-store-ad-fraud-du-group-
baidu
14. August 2020 / Page 13marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Malvertising, Auto-Redirect Attacks
Large-scale malvertising attacks continue through ad networks
January 2018
https://www.blog.geoedge.com/s
ingle-post/2018/01/10/New-
Report-Auto-Redirect-Attacks-
Costing-Publishers-113-Billion
November 2018
https://www.zdnet.com/article/
malicious-code-hidden-in-advert-
images-cost-ad-networks-1-13bn-
last-year/
January 2018
https://blog.confiant.com/uncove
ring-2017s-largest-malvertising-
operation-b84cd38d6b85
April 2019
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com
/news/security/malvertising-
campaign-abused-chrome-to-hijack-
500-million-ios-user-sessions/
15. August 2020 / Page 14marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Not humans, something else
16. August 2020 / Page 15marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Why isn’t it detected?
17. August 2020 / Page 16marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Bad guys easily avoid detection
Blocking of tags, altering measurement to avoid detection
Detection Tag Blocking— analytics
tags/fraud detection tags are accidentally
blocked or maliciously stripped out
“malicious code manipulated data to
ensure that otherwise unviewable ads
showed up in measurement systems
as valid impressions, which resulted in
payment being made for the ad.”
Source: Buzzfeed, March 2018
18. August 2020 / Page 17marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Traffic sellers’ “high quality traffic”
Many sources to buy “traffic” and even tune “quality” level
Choose Your “Traffic Quality Level”
“Valid traffic” goes
for higher prices
19. August 2020 / Page 18marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
linkedin.com/in/augustinefou
Domain spoofing examples
Fake sites disguise themselves as good domains to sell inventory
“bad actors intentionally disguise the nature of
the ad space they’re selling. … a marketer might
believe they’re paying for ads on FT.com.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/financial-
times-finds-counterfeit-ad-space-was-
offered-by-at-least-six-companies-
1507563713
“more than 1,400 apps were
found to have loaded ads under
TV Guide’s domain name”
2017 2018
20. August 2020 / Page 19marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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They miss obvious botnets
Bots repeatedly loading ads and pages, 100% Android devices
Devices repeatedly load ads 100% Android 8.0.0 visitors
21. August 2020 / Page 20marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
linkedin.com/in/augustinefou
Legit sites incorrectly marked
Domain (spoofed) % SIVT
esquire.com 77%
travelchannel.com 76%
foodnetwork.com 76%
popularmechanics.com 74%
latimes.com 72%
reuters.com 71%
bid request
fakesite123.com
esquire.com
passes blacklist
passes whitelist
✅
✅
declared
1. fakesite123.com has to pretend
to be esquire.com to get bids;
2. fraud measurement shows high
IVT b/c it is measuring the fake
site with fake traffic
3. Fake esquire.com gets mixed with
real so average fraud rates
appear high.
4. Real esquire.com gets backlisted;
bad guy moves on to another
domain.
22. August 2020 / Page 21marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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(2017) Pop-Unders / Redirects
These forms of fraud typically get by current fraud detection tech
a.k.a. “zero-click” “pop-under”
“forced-view” “auto-nav”
Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/remember-tom
23. August 2020 / Page 22marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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(2018) Cheetah was cheating
“Eight apps with a total of more than 2 billion
downloads in the Google Play store have been
exploiting user permissions as part of an ad
fraud scheme that could have stolen millions
of dollars.”
Source: Buzzfeed News, Nov 2018
25. August 2020 / Page 24marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Just because you can’t measure it
… doesn’t mean it’s not there.
26. August 2020 / Page 25marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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“ad fraud is not a tech problem; it’s
an incentives problem – many
stakeholders want it to continue
because it’s so lucrative.”
27. August 2020 / Page 26marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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What is ad fraud like?
28. August 2020 / Page 27marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Counterfeit goods
Just like fake watches and handbags, fake digital ads
29. August 2020 / Page 28marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Computer crimes
Hacking, malware, ransomware, drive-by cryptomining
https://blog.malwarebytes.com/cybercrime/2018/02/state-malicious-cryptomining/https://www.scmagazine.com/home/security-news/trojanized-apps-
containing-ad-fraud-malware-downloaded-102m-times/
30. August 2020 / Page 29marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Securities fraud
Deceptive practice of inducing investors with false information
• Revenues derived from
illegal activities
• Inflating revenue,
profits through ad fraud
• Overstating subscribers,
active users, ARPU
• Selling counterfeit
services and products
• Misrepresenting the
capabilities of services,
products
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/25/tech/match-group-sued/index.html
31. August 2020 / Page 30marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Illegal Access / Breaches
Harvesting personal info, ecommerce transactions, other data
BreachesIllegal Access
https://www.csoonline.com/article/2130
877/data-breach/the-biggest-data-
breaches-of-the-21st-century.html
32. August 2020 / Page 31marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Illegal Interception
Keystroke logging to collect logins, passwords, other personal info
Source: Freedom to Tinker, Nov 2017
https://www.thedailybeast.com/california-passes-landmark-
privacy-bill-to-restrict-data-harvesting
33. August 2020 / Page 32marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Data interference
Alteration or suppression of computer data
Buzzfeed, March 2018
Source:
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/19/business/la-
fi-mo-cookie-stuffing-ebay-20130419
“Laguna Niguel man pleads
guilty in 'cookie stuffing' scam
against Ebay. The online
auctioneer paid Dunning’s
company about $5.2 million in
2006 and 2007, the U.S. Attorney
said.”
34. August 2020 / Page 33marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Misuse of Devices
Ransomware and malicious cryptomining using humans’ devices
https://blog.malwarebytes.com/cybercrime/2018/02/state-malicious-cryptomining/https://www.zdnet.com/article/ransomware-not-dead-just-getting-a-lot-sneakier/
35. August 2020 / Page 34marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Forgery, falsified profiles
Unverifiable lookalike audiences contain fake profiles/preferences
Bots pretend to be
oncologists by visiting
oncology related sites.
“[LOTAME] purged 400 million
of its over 4 billion profiles after
identifying them as bots.”
Adweek, Feb 2018
36. August 2020 / Page 35marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Criminal impersonation
Bad guys pretend to be politicians, celebrities to trick consumers
37. August 2020 / Page 36marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Copyright infringement
Entire pages copied to thousands of other sites, to get free traffic
Google search on entire phrase in quotes:
http://bit.ly/16H9Gk5
Source: Buzzfeed, August 2020
38. August 2020 / Page 37marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Piracy/Mass Infringement
Large numbers of cloned sites containing 100% pirated content
Mass infringement
sites use pirated
content to attract
human visitors
- Show ads
- Attempt to hack
them or track them
39. August 2020 / Page 38marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Identity theft scenarios
Stolen personal info can be sold, and also later used in hacking
https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/heres-how-much-
your-personal-information-is-selling-for-on-the-dark-web/
Data Prices on the Dark Web
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/09/tech/fac
ebook-ukraine-hackers/index.html
40. August 2020 / Page 39marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Money laundering scenario
Dollars are laundered as digital media ad spend on “cash out” sites
1. Buy digital media via ad exchanges on sites
directly or indirectly owned by the same entities
2. Pay “ad tech tax” (cut to middlemen)
3. Collect dollars from “cash out” sites, fully
laundered
41. August 2020 / Page 40marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Wire fraud, mail fraud
Knowingly misrepresenting the capabilities of the … technology
“Allegedly engaged in a multi-million dollar
scheme to defraud investors, as well as a
doctors and patients. charged with two counts
of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and nine
counts of wire fraud.
Holmes and Balwani were accused of knowingly
misrepresenting the capabilities of Theranos'
proprietary blood testing technology. The two
allegedly knew there were "accuracy and
reliability problems," and that it "could not
compete with existing, more conventional
machines," the US Attorney's office said.”
http://money.cnn.com/2018/06/15/technology/elizabeth-
holmes-indicted-theranos/index.html
https://www.slideshare.net/augustinefou/why-fraud-
detection-doesnt-work
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/brand-safety-
detection-tech-over-representing-what/
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Ads fund piracy, porn, hate sites
Source: Adweek, 2013 Source: BusinessInsider, 2014 Source: New York Times 2018
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Ad fraud is criminals’
favorite “cash out” activity.
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The most profitable criminal activity
2,500 - 4,100% returns
11% returns1% interest
digital ad fraud
stock marketbank interest
“where else can I get multi-
thousands percent returns on
my money? Right. Nowhere.”
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“Ad fraud is at ALL TIME HIGHS
both in RATE and in DOLLARS…
… and what’s worse is fraud
detection is not catching it, so
people have a false sense of security.”
Source: https://www.slideshare.net/augustinefou/state-of-digital-ad-fraud-q2-2018
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Digital Marketing circa 2018
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About the Author
Augustine Fou, PhD.
acfou [@] mktsci.com
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Dr. Augustine Fou – Researcher
2013
2014
Published slide decks and posts:
http://www.slideshare.net/augustinefou/presentations
https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/augustinefou
2016
2015
2017
20192018