Aspies For Freedom

I've been noticing for a while now that several autistic rights websites use google ads, and occasionally they display ads promoting pro-cure sites, which doesn't really look very good.

I was on the verge of writing a complaint letter to google, but then I started thinking - this could actually be used to our advantage...

Consider this - when you click on a google ad, the site involved will be charged a certain amount of money for the "click-through" - usually about US$1.00 or so. A percentage of this will then go to the site hosting the ads (although I'm not sure what the percentage is).

What this means is that by going to an autistic rights site that uses google ads, refreshing the page until a pro-cure site appears, then clicking on the ad, you would be taking money out of the pro-cure sites advertising budget, and using it to fund anti-cure sites!

Just one note - don't do this more than once a day per site per person, because it might flag a warning to google (They keep track of the different ISP addresses clicking on ads from a particular site).

*grins* There's a reason I didn't just go by the name of "Zakkie"...

How about a small automated (or should that be "autie-mated") script, set up to automate click-throughs, spoofing the IP and MAC addresses of the originating pc.

Could cost the bastards thousands, before it was detected.

thats...sheer evil genius :twisted:

i vote we do it!

Sheer genius yes, but lets just think for a moment. This could be classified as fraud and just talking about it here points the finger at us if and when it is discovered. Is there someone in a country who could do it without any chances of repercussions? Somewhere the US and UK do not have any diplomatic connections with?

I have to admit I am never comfortable with stuff like this, because it technically amounts to theft. Also there is the risk that the pro-curebie groups could use it to generate negative publicity against us if we got caught. A lot of pro's and con's to weigh up.

Ultimately, if anybody does choose to do it, I think they should be sure not to associate the project with Aspies for freedom, because we could never get everybody’s agreement. It might also be sensible to find somewhere more private to talk about it if any of you are going to go ahead.

Sorry if I sound like a bore, but I think it is good to look at things from all angles.

*grins* Nice idea, but it would be shut off too quickly, and google would probably just reject the clicks as ingenuine. I figure that there's enough members around that we could cost them thousands anyway.

Point taken, but I think that individual users from random computers around the world clicking through not more than once a day would make it hard to draw any sorts of conclusions from.

I often like to see what the bad guys are up to every now and then - so it's just as easy for me to click on an ad from one of these sites.

It depends on if the charity is paying for the ad or not.  Maybe the service is donated by google or whoever.  You have to let the sponsors know that you do not support the charity and for what reasons.

STOP THE PRESS

this would be counted as click fraud,under the computer misuse act 1990 (uk) and penal code 502 in california.

Non-contracting parties
A secondary source of click fraud is non-contracting parties, who are not part of any pay-per-click agreement. This type of fraud is even harder to police because perpetrators generally cannot be sued for breach of contract or charged criminally with fraud. Examples of non-contracting parties are:

Competitors of advertisers: These parties may wish to harm a competitor who advertises in the same market by clicking on their ads. The perpetrators don't profit directly, but force advertiser to pay for irrelevant clicks thus weakening or eliminating a source of competition.
Competitors of publishers: These persons may wish to frame a publisher. It is made to look like the publisher is clicking on its own ads. The advertising network may then terminate the relationship. Many publishers rely exclusively on revenue from advertising and can be put out of business by such an attack.

Other malicious intent: As with vandalism, there's an array of motives for wishing to cause harm to either an advertiser or a publisher, even by people who have nothing to gain financially. Motives include political and personal vendettas. These cases are often the hardest to deal with, since it is hard to track down the culprit, and if found, there is little legal action that can be taken against them.

Unwanted "friends" of the publisher: Sometimes upon learning a publisher profits from ads being clicked, a supporter of the publisher (like a fan, family member, or personal friend), will click on the ads to "help". However, this can backfire when the publisher (not the "friend") is accused of click fraud.

Advertising networks try to stop fraud by all parties, but often do not know which clicks are legitimate. Unlike fraud committed by the publisher, it is hard to know who should pay when past click fraud is found. Publishers resent having to pay refunds for something that is not their fault. However, advertisers are adamant that they should not have to pay for phony clicks

As I understand it, that rules out having an automated bot, but NOT having people just click on the ads. I mean, seriously--if you have people occasionally clicking a link in an ad, then how the heck do you determine if it's an "irrelevant" click or not?

P.S. If we're going to discuss this, i would probably be a good idea to move it to somewhere more private before it pops up on Dark Web or something.

I just realised that they would be able to tell by matching IP addresses against clicks for particular sites, so it wouldn't really work - you could get away with clicking an ad for each different site once or twice, but that's about it.

Might be better to just alert Google to the mistake, and get them to stop showing these ads on autistic rights sites.

The best suggestion by far!

And could be applied elsewhere. I would hate to be searching for jewish-culture sites and get a link to an anti-semitic organisation....

if they as fucking useless as Myspace about offensive ads,you are better off just blocking the google ads (if you are in FireFox,i suggest adblock) than trying to get them removed.

But wouldn't this click-attack get their hit count up? people might look at it and decide its a popular cause and then donate to them

wow i didn't know that YAY! i get to randomly click and destroy anti cure groups! WOOHOOO!