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Google claims to have removed the apps and blacklisted the websites used in a huge scam that reported millions of dollars to fraudsters who were using bots designed to mimic user behavior.
The system, described in a Buzzfeed News report, focuses on a company called We Purchase Apps that does just that, generously paying for bitcoin applications and transferring ownership to various front companies and front companies in Cyprus, Malta, British Virgin Islands, Croatia and the United Kingdom. Bulgaria.
The project would have involved 125 Android apps and websites. To create a compelling fake traffic for sale, scammers buy legitimate Android apps with an established reputation and then study the behavior of their users.
By using this information, they can create robots that act as human users to send real traffic to the fraudster's application. Fraudsters also mix the traffic generated by the robots and by the man to escape the detection of advertising fraud.
Google has estimated the cost of advertiser fraud at less than $ 10 million.
"The majority of advertisers' expenses came from invalid inventory traffic from non-Google third-party ad networks," said Per Bjorke, Product Manager for Google's Ad Traffic Quality Unit.
SEE: Cybersecurity in an IoT and mobile world (ZDNet Special Report) | Download the report in PDF format (TechRepublic)
Google indicates that the fake web traffic was generated by a botnet called TechSnab, which it is already monitoring.
The TechSnab malware is usually provided with free third party applications and is installed as a browser extension. Users would discover an infection if they saw pop-ups, pop-unders, and various other "TechSnab" ads.
Google also confirmed that some of the fraudulent apps were making money through its AdMob platform. He removed the apps and confirmed that the traffic generated by them "seems to be a mix of organic user traffic and artificially inflated ad traffic, including traffic based on hidden ads".
"We are actively monitoring this operation, and continually updating and improving our control tactics," Bjorke said.
Part of the scheme was discovered in June by the Pixalate advertising fraud detection company, which focused on "bleaching mobile applications," in which a fraudster usurps the unique identifier of a legitimate application.
In this case, an advertiser may need to purchase an ad inventory for an app, but its ads are served to another app not used by anyone.
An example was an Android application called MegaCast, which, according to Pixalate, displayed the unique identifier of other apps in order to attract bids for ads. It is one of the 125 Buzzfeed News apps and websites connected to a handful of loosely linked companies.
According to Pixalate, the MegaCast app has usurped approximately 60 apps and generated up to $ 75 million a year from major advertisers including Disney, L 'Oréal, Facebook, Volvo and Lyft. MegaCast was removed from the Google Play Store after the Pixalate report.
Buzzfeed News found that the stolen apps were not victims, but were actually part of the same ploy.
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