A Russian criminal group is running a massive fraud that has been siphoning off millions of digital advertising dollars a day for a couple of months, a firm that specializes in detecting online-ad fraud says. The scam may have cost brands, and potentially media companies, hundreds of millions of dollars. ]
“Methbot” scam targets companies paying for ads
The New York-based firm White Ops said that the “Methbot” scam made it appear that hundreds of thousands of people, mostly in the U.S., were watching real video ads from real companies on more than 6,000 fake websites that mimicked well-known publishers, including CNN, Vogue and The New York Times. Nobody was actually watching. The criminal ring’s gains come out of the pockets of companies paying for digital ads and also, potentially, of the websites that could have hosted those ads.
Read more at The Montreal Gazette.
