Android Fraud Network Stole Millions of False Advertising Revenues

More than 125 Android apps and websites have been dragged into a huge fraudulent scheme that has cost hundreds of millions of dollars in stolen ad revenue, according to an in-depth survey report released by Buzzfeed News.

As buzzfeedThe report revealed that fraudsters were buying legitimate and well-established applications from developers through a screen company called "We buy apps". These applications would have their ownership rights transferred to shell companies that would continue to manage applications while analyzing user behavior and application interactions.

This data would then be used to program a network of robots that would be directed to purchased applications, realistically usurping user behavior using actual data, while being effectively masked by legitimate users who always interact with applications. This has raised millions of dollars in advertising revenue generated by companies paying for their ads through in-app ad networks, including those managed by Google. It is a clever system, which relies on hiding fraudulent bot traffic directly from the usual user data, making it more difficult for any anti-fraud system to detect.

Buzzfeed News has already informed Google of this project, and the company has begun to act, noting in a separate post that it has removed many of the apps involved in the play of the Play Store and its ad network, although some of the larger ones detailed applications by buzzfeedThe report, including EverythingMe, an app with more than 20 million installations, is still available on the Play Store. According to the Google report, the company estimates that about $ 10 million has been stolen because of false visions of advertisers via the Google ad network only, but this number could only represent one Small fraction of the damage, with Pixalate – a fraud detection company that detected the first item of fictional advertising in June – estimating that a single application could cost advertisers up to $ 75 million a year.

Update of October 23 at 15:05: Adding additional estimates of damage caused by the scheme.