Yahoo! and Google act on click fraud

ahoo! and Google are taking action to counter click fraud. Yahoo! is appointing a click-fraud Czar and Google is trialing changes to its AdWords scheme.

Click fraud occurs when someone deliberately hits adverts on a website to rack up charges for a rival company.

It is not clear how big the problem is, but many companies claim, and receive, refunds for dodgy clicks. Advertisers fear that bills are being wrongly inflated and the search engines hold all the cards - it is all but impossible to know whether clicks on your adverts are genuine potential sales leads or not.
In response, Yahoo! is promoting company attorney Reggie Davis to the postion of VP of marketplace quality, with the job of reducing click fraud and ensuring customers trust the results they get.
Davis told Reuters that between 12 and 15 per cent of Yahoo! clicks are rejected and not charged for. But not all of these are actually fraudulent clicks.

Google, meanwhile, is beta testing a new way for US companies to pay for adverts. "Pay-for-action" allows advertisers to specify an action - like signing up to a newsletter, entering a competition, or even making a purchase - and pay Google on the basis of that action rather than just paying for a click-through to a website.

The search giant said the change would give advertisers more choice. The new scheme is designed to complement its current cost-per-click and cost-per-impression pricing models
c the register

Man hijacks 90 eBay accounts

An Australian man pleaded guilty to breaking into eBay and a local bank to steal AU$42,000 (about $34,000), in a case that demonstrates the problem of account takeovers on the auction site.

Dov Tenenboim, 21, of the Sydney suburb of North Bondi, stood accused of breaking into at least 90 different eBay seller accounts last year, mostly by guessing passwords. Tenenboim frequently figured out the credentials by matching usernames to passwords, prosecutors said. Other times he hacked into email accounts.
Following a familiar route, Tenenboim targeted users with highly favorable feedback ratings from their eBay peers. Posting under the guise of a trusted user with an established account makes it easier to dupe buyers.

After hacking the accounts, Tenenboim used them to advertise non-existent iPods, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. He also hacked into the Commonwealth Bank. He pleaded guilty to two counts of making a false statement to obtain money, two counts of obtaining money by deception and four counts of committing an unauthorized computer function. Tenenboim faces a maximum of 11 years in jail and fines of $9,900.
Account takeovers have been a persistent problem on eBay. Over the past several weeks, we've observed hundreds of fraudulent auctions being offered by users with unblemished records. Such hijackings are on the rise, according to a small but vocal group of eBay users, who also claim the breaches are the result of an unpatched security hole in the company's defenses.

eBay strongly denies such a hole and says the takeovers are the result of users having their log-in credentials snatched through lax passwords and phishing attacks. Tenenboim's methods appear consistent with such statements.
But eBay can't be let off the hook completely. The company employs lax password requirements that, for instance, allow a user ID of james34231 and a password of james34. (To be fair, Google Mail allowed the same combination, though the site warned it was only "fair.")

What's more, eBay, like the vast majority of online services, has no mechanism in place to allow account holders to log in using security keys that generate random numbers every minute or so. Such devices would render most current password attack methods ineffective.eBay has said it is in the early stages of testing such a system for its PayPal users, and a spokeswoman says the key will also work on eBay.

C by register

UK cops clamp down on midnight PS3 launch

London's main Oxford Street Virgin Megastore will be the only shop to offer Sony PlayStation 3s at midnight tomorrow - thanks to the actions of Westminster Council and the Metropolitan Police. The reason? Local government and law enforcement officials fear they won't be able to cope with the crowds.
This means that anyone who pre-ordered a PS3 anywhere other than the Virgin Megastore, and was hoping to collect it tonight, is in for a big disappointment.

Retail chain Game has advised its customers to call their local branch to see if it's opening at midnight. But it warned you will have to have registered for your PS3 at the branch you visit. You can't collect from a different store.
Not one HMV store in London is opening its doors. However, beyond the capital approximately 50 shops around the UK will be opening as planned – but even this number is changing from hour to hour, a direct result from the reactions of police forces around the country as they act on the notion that lots of people will be roaming the streets late at night carrying brand new PS3s worth around £425 - all of them potential robbery targets.
So, come Thursday evening, it could be considerably less than 50 HMV stores that stay open for the launch. Again, HMV said customers should contact their nearest store to find out... what the heck is actually going on.

Whether the approach being adopted by the boys in blue will prove a sensible one in the long run remains to be seen. Either way, there are going to be a lot of disappointed PlayStation fans out tonight, all of them wondering why they didn't just buy an Xbox 360 or a Wii
By reghw

Skype to offer money-transfer system via PayPal

SAN JOSE, California (Reuters) - Web telephone calling service Skype will shortly begin allowing users to send money to other Skype users via the PayPal online payments system, Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom said on Tuesday.Speaking at a technology conference in Silicon Valley, Skype Chief Executive Zennstrom said the company is working with PayPal, but declined to say exactly when the service would be made available to Skype's tens of millions of global users.

Both Skype and PayPal are units of online auction leader eBay Inc. (Nasdaq:EBAY - news). PayPal is already the most popular way that Skype users pay for long-distance Skype phone calls to other phones.
"You can send money over Skype," Zennstrom said of the upcoming service plan. "This is basically connecting the Skype community over PayPal. All the user needs is a PayPal account."

A Skype spokesman said following Zennstrom's remarks that the service should be formally unveiled within a month.
Skype had 171 million registered users worldwide at the end of 2006. A year ago, PayPal began limited experiments allowing users to send money to other cell phone users via text messages, but has done little to promote that service so far.

Skype-PayPal can function as a money transfer service for transactions as simple as sending a friend money to split a restaurant bill.

"A lot of people using Skype are people who have friends and family on the other side of the world," Zennstrom said.