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Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

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Re: Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

#251

Post by shawnz »

darkpuma wrote: post #244
shawnz wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Television commercials are fundamentally more coercive than radio commercials, so should we all transition back to radio just to avoid those small additional coercive factors? No, of course not, there are benefits to television that are more important than those factors.

You should in fact practice television avoidance. It's an awful format in just about every sense. You should not begin listening to more radio to compensate. Reading more newspapers and books would be more appropriate. Something movie trailers, television, and radio all have in common is the coercive use of music to manipulate how you feel, particularly when trying to persuade you to buy something or vote for somebod…

Ok, maybe television wasn't the best example of my point. Let me give a different example. Advertisements on the web are fundamentally more coercive than advertisements in the newspaper, so should we regress back to newspapers? You mentioned adblockers but obviously that's not feasible for television, so for the purposes of the hypothetical, assume that adblocking on the web isn't feasible either. Would you stop using the web if that was the case?

Re: Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

#252

Post by cwkoss »

Would be great if ad networks would stop letting random companies embed whatever js they want.

There is no reason a banner ad should have this capability. Twitter's MoPub is showing their negligent greed.

That being said, draining video ads budgets is probably a pro-social 'Robin Hood' kind of theft.

Re: Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

#253

Post by ChuckMcM »

From the article -- which will see more than $20 billion stolen this year.

Think about the number in that article for a minute, $20 BILLION dollars "stolen" last YEAR.

How many places are there in the world where you can steal over a billion dollars from them, and they won't hunt you down and kill your family? A nation-state? Nope they will send their intelligence service after you. A drug cartel? Don't even get me started, this is the same scale of numbers that drug cartels earn[1]

And since there is no "War on Ad Fraudsters", no departments dedicated to hunting down and arresting 'kingpin' Ad hackers, why would you sell drugs when you can make about the same amount, so much more safely? When you figure all the expenses you don't need, the bribes, the security forces, the underground tunnels, even going out and acquiring product. This is so much better way to stealing money.

[1] the estimate, from the Justice Department, that Colombian and Mexican cartels reap $18 billion to $39 billion from drug sales in the United States each year. --- https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/magazine/how-a-mexican-dr...

Re: Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

#254

Post by cwkoss »

Barrin92 wrote: post #106
stestagg wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as if you were to buy a child’s toy that has a secret embedded camera that streams to some foreign server. It may be the manufacturers fault, but the person who sold it to you (the provider) is liable. Should be the same here

I think it's a little bit more complicated. There's a point where this becomes somewhat questionable. Say the toy has a reputable certification and the company, up until now, never had any track record of mistreating their customers. In this case I'd argue the company is responsible, not the parent, and that it is actually worthy following through to find whoever acted maliciously rather than just picking the last pe…

If you want to sell a product, you are liable for that product. It's simple.

Excessive trust is negligent. Let the market decide how to mitigate risk, but eliminating the risk creates opportunity for profiting from malfeasance.

Re: Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

#255

Post by rchaud »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #240
rchaud wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The internet existed before advertising and it could continue to exist without it. It would, but it would be much harder to find content, because the major search engines pretty much only show corporate content marketing pieces that are written specifically to rank well in search results. The other day, I was looking for some essays or blog posts about a particular TV show. The first 5 pages on Google were all vari…

Harder to find? Wouldn't a lack of advertising money kill most of those garbage sites?

SEO is SEO. Not all of those sites are ad-supported. You could have a copy writer post an article for that TV show, for the blog of a streaming service that offers it.

There are also plenty of corporate sites offering some SaaS product that will put out semi-technical blog posts that rank high but don't give you the full picture and end with a CTA like "Want to learn more? Sign up for our webinar".

The goal is for you to arrive on their blog page, and "convert" into a customer, or fill out a contact form. The content is a means to an end, which hurts content quality.

Re: Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

#256

Post by stingraycharles »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #253

From the article -- which will see more than $20 billion stolen this year. Think about the number in that article for a minute, $20 BILLION dollars "stolen" last YEAR. How many places are there in the world where you can steal over a billion dollars from them, and they won't hunt you down and kill your family? A nation-state? Nope they will send their intelligence service after you. A drug cartel? Don't even get me s…

Keep in mind that it’s primarily the publishers that are hurt by this. Advertisers typically determine what they’re willing to spend on inventory based on the ROI, which is decreased by ad fraud.

As such, the inventory of “genuine” publishers is devalued as well.

Note that in this sense, a publisher can be both a powerhouse like FB or Google, or also smaller outlets.

Re: Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

#257

Post by EE84M3i »

baybal2 wrote: post #30
hrdwdmrbl wrote: post #26

My first thought is that this is really Google's problem to fix. How is it even possible to do this on Android? Or is this also possible on iOS?

How? Google's last secret bastion of defence was a common opengl driver glitch that was checked from well hidden webgl shader code. Even that was said to be cracked in no time. Simple explanation is that people on the other side of adfraud war are the ones getting incomparably bigger money than any ad-fraud specialist hired by ad companies (and they both hire pretty much the same people...) Imagine, the more Google c…

I'm curious about this "hidden webgl shader code" you're talking about, but only getting google results for this comment. Do you have a reference for this?

Re: Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

#258

Post by radium3d »

product50 wrote: post #47
radium3d wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is great but I definitely wouldn't put Facebook ad clicks anywhere near the quality of Google ad clicks.

If anything Facebook's clicks are much more reliable than Google's since Facebook shows almost all its ads on its O&O properties where there is 0 potential for fraud. A lot Google's mobile ads are via AdMob which are shown on third party apps which Google doesn't own - which can lead to scenarios where the publisher may be upto some mischief.

AdMob is O&O by Google. I would say mischief is doable on both platforms since it is up to the developer to implement either SDK within their apps. This is why it is important to monitor conversion rates and be selective as to which apps your ads appear on. You could select Google's apps only for example.

Re: Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

#259

Post by SkyBelow »

cwkoss wrote: post #254
Barrin92 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a little bit more complicated. There's a point where this becomes somewhat questionable. Say the toy has a reputable certification and the company, up until now, never had any track record of mistreating their customers. In this case I'd argue the company is responsible, not the parent, and that it is actually worthy following through to find whoever acted maliciously rather than just picking the last pe…

If you want to sell a product, you are liable for that product. It's simple. Excessive trust is negligent. Let the market decide how to mitigate risk, but eliminating the risk creates opportunity for profiting from malfeasance.

If someone trades a product with a neighbor, are they liable since they sold it for a different form of currency? Or would this only be aimed at those who reach a certain level of trading/selling per year?

Re: Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

#260

Post by pwthornton »

hannob wrote: post #65

It is interesting how this article starts. A guy has an app which drains users batteries. But it's not his fault of course, because it's the ad company. Except the ad company says it's not their fault, because the ad came from some other company. This fingerpointing points to one of the core problems of the ad industry: They created a system where nobody knows who's responsible for anything, so malware and fraud has…

I live this everyday. Our ad team blames the ad network they run on our products if malware gets through, rather than taking responsibility and banning the ad network. Or even better, taking responsibility themselves for selecting ad networks that run scams and malware.

To me, if an ad network allows crap through, we have to take onwership and penalize the ad network and move on. But there is no accountability. It's everyone fighting for that next penny.

No one in the supply chain takes responsibility for this. That's how I, someone who works for a company that has ad-supported products, runs an ad blocker at the router level in my home. If people are going to actively try to harm me and my family by hunting for pennies, I am going to seek protection.

And because no one takes responsibility for this whole mess, the whole house of cards will fall. More and more devices are coming with ad-blocking built in. If we can't responsibly create ad-supported businesses, how can we honestly expect people to want to see those ads?

Digital advertising is so divorced from making users happy.

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