WebProNews

One of the largest click fraud rings ever detected, originating from China, has been shut down by click fraud monitoring firm Anchor Intelligence.

"This is really the first time anyone has ever been able to catch click fraudsters 'in the act.' Anchor has identified fraudsters down to the publisher site, IPs used (likely via botnets), and even the names and address of some perpetrators," an Anchor spokesperson told WebProNews. 

"We have an ongoing collaboration with the San Francisco Division of the FBI as well as the National Cyber-Forensics & Training Alliance (NCFTA) to share insights about the tactics used by these and other click fraud perpetrators."

The Chinese fraud ring consisted of thousands of publishers who created websites and generated fake ad traffic on these sites with the purpose of defrauding ad networks and advertisers.

Anchor says the click fraud hit the ads of nearly 2,000 advertisers across multiple ad networks. The clicks originated from 200,000 IPs, and if undetected would have cost the affected advertisers over $3 million over the course of a year.

The fraudsters dubbed "DormRing1" by Anchor because many of the people involved were students operating out of dormitories at Shanghai Technology Institute and other Chinese technical universities.  Working with one of its ad network customers, Anchor tracked the operations of DormRing1 by gaining access to exclusive bulletin boards on various Chinese social networking sites.

"Click fraud rings are active across the Internet and constantly evolving their tactics while trolling for vulnerable networks and advertisers," said Ken Miller, CEO of Anchor Intelligence.