Attempted Click Fraud Increases 34%

Security firm Anchor Intelligence has published its Q1 2010 report on traffic quality. As expected, click fraud has again been reported to increase across the Internet.

The report disclosed that the average rate of attempted click fraud surged to 29.2% in Q1 2010 from 25.7% in Q1 2009, depicting a 34% rise on a year-on-year basis.

As per the security firm, the present rate of the attempted click fraud throws light on the drastic growth rate in the magnitude and volume of botnets across the world.

This increase in the activity of botnet across the network of Anchor Intelligence is steady with other incidents of harmful activity evolving from hacked systems all over the world. Latest reports from Google and McAfee observed a rise in cyber assaults on blogs condemning Vietnam's mining projects. Moreover, in December 2009 and January 2010, more than thirty firms were hit by cyber assaults emanating from China, which were developed to steal private information from business networks.

In addition, the security firm's report also contained country-wise data on traffic quality rates, with Vietnam, Australia and the US at 35.4%, 35.2%, 35% respectively, and thus occupying the leading three spots for highest click fraud rates among 30 different countries. Further, click fraud rings and botnets probably constitute the major cause of forged traffic in the abovementioned nations. UK has mainly been a victim of botnet attacks over the past six months (October 2009 to March 2010), with the rates of click fraud increasing to 32% in Q1 2010 as compared to 18% in Q4 2009.

CEO of Anchor Intelligence, Ken Miller, stated that as web usage has increased in countries where cyber security measures have not been sufficiently implemented, more and more systems are suffering malware attacks and are being successfully used as click fraud zombies, as per the news published by BizReport on April 9, 2010.

Lastly, Anchor Intelligence claimed that botnet activities, along with other malicious activities like cyber attacks aiming at stealing people's identities, is a caution to brands as well as consumers to protect their data.

Related article: Attempted Click Fraud Rate Reached Record Level in Q2 2010

» SPAMfighter News - 4/21/2010