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Microsoft Sues Family for $750,000 Over Bing Click Fraud

blogs.seattleweekly.com — "The Lam/Suen family was allegedly using click fraud to make more money for their site WoWMine.com—mainly by clicking competitors' ads until their competitors' ad budgets were exhausted. Thus, Microsoft is suing them for $750,000."

Who dugg this? Made popular Jun 17, 2009

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174 Comments

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  • Dantc, on 06/17/2009, -3/+158They deserve it.
  • OfNumbers, on 06/17/2009, -0/+92Gold Farmers getting sued? Whoa. Whoa there, whoa.
  • hawkspur, on 06/17/2009, -3/+83***** gold farmers. Biggest contributors to spam, account hacking, and banner adds for every MMO in existence.
  • MarkBrent, on 06/17/2009, -0/+70They are gonna get crushed by Microsoft.
  • inactive, on 06/17/2009, -1/+58Now that's a lot, When I was young, I opened a blogspot blog and optimized it for Adsense. I used to keep clicking my own ads, asking friends to click etc. Finally reached the payout 100$, Whoaa I was banned. Adsense is pretty good in this stuff, They catch you and Ban you.
  • pissshivers, on 06/17/2009, -1/+42They're getting binged.
  • LargeStack, on 06/17/2009, -2/+41"A quick check of court records confirms that this is among the nerdiest scams ever."

    How can you end an article with this line?
  • typicalusername, on 06/17/2009, -2/+32That'll be the day when I have to thank Microsoft to stop the random gold vendor yells in Org.
  • IvanB, on 06/17/2009, -1/+29Seriously, they should have seen it coming.
  • 1hrSleep, on 06/17/2009, -2/+28...I don't know how the ***** you got to that conclusion.
  • FunFactor100, on 06/17/2009, -0/+22Yeah, Google will catch you if you try to make money fraudulently as an AdSense member. However if you're losing money due to fraud with your AdWords account they turn a blind eye. I know of a company owner clicking on a competitors AdWords links over and over to blow their ad budget. Google says you have to prove fraud on your own for them to reverse the charges. Do no evil indeed.
  • tpmidd, on 06/17/2009, -2/+24It's an awesome ending.
  • inactive, on 06/17/2009, -1/+15yeah...because Google doesn't have ANY problem with click fraud!
  • rnawky, on 06/17/2009, -0/+14Thank God. I stopped playing WoW a few months ago due to boredom and school work load, but I'm sure I'm not alone when I say having to hear gold farmers advertise in trade chat then immediately log off and come back on another character pisses me off.

    I REALLY hope Microsoft wins this one. All they have to do is throw money at their legal team and they're all good.
  • xxl3w, on 06/17/2009, -1/+14Actually, it's been doing quite well. You should read some bing v/s google tests. It's very interesting. I'm trying to adjust to bing. I'm still so accustomed to google's layout, i doubt i'll ever leave. (althought i said that about webcrawler years ago)
  • xxl3w, on 06/17/2009, -1/+13You understand this is charging the advertisers, not microsoft, meaning Microsoft is probably trying to get the poor advertisers money back so it can refund it to them. Great microsoft hating.
  • joshuaer, on 06/17/2009, -1/+13well in explorer bing is now the default and redirect so i bet a lot of people are using it.
  • tribecom, on 06/17/2009, -1/+13Thats the attitude that pretty much sums up the banking crisis, enron scandal, et al.

    Time to examine your moral compass if you think there was nothing wrong with what these folks were doing.
  • WesleyJohnson, on 09/25/2009, -0/+11Same here. I used to run myXspy (formerly XangaSpy) which was a stat tracker/user sniffer for Xanga blogs. I had an adsense account making about $50 a month and got greedy. Enticed users to click on the ads and if I hit xxx dollars for the month, I'd role out new features.

    I ended up hitting $700 in one month, but never saw the check - only a BANNED email. They eventually reinstated my account, but I obviously never got the money and that site is now long gone. Learned my lesson - read the TOS!
  • Ellipsys, on 06/17/2009, -2/+12More importantly, it appears the WoWMine proprietors are not just gold sellers, but they sell people's information to others? What a ***** scam. There are too many of these shifty chinese businesses out there. I don't inherently object to real money transfer for MMOs - just recently I cleared a credit card full of medical expenses by selling a card with a rare pet in WoW for real money. Players can sell gold they've farmed directly to others or to resellers for a tidy profit, but these Chinese scam artists tend to hack people's accounts (be wary of any of the "give us your info and we'll log on for you to give you your gold" scams), dupe and exploit to make more gold, and worst of all sell people's information. Honestly, I think there's a market for ethical, Western gold sellers instead to drive these foreign scammers out of business.
  • Xaramoth, on 06/17/2009, -1/+11Who in the hell is retarded enough to buy gold?
  • inactive, on 06/17/2009, -0/+10never tried it, eh?
  • techdever, on 06/17/2009, -0/+101.5 millimeter dollars?
  • inactive, on 06/17/2009, -0/+10I think you underestimate the stupidity of some people. This guy probably thought his genius plan was flawless.
  • xxl3w, on 06/17/2009, -1/+11I mean, a business, trying to make money? THAT'S ASTONISHING. I wonder why digg irritates us with all those ads? COLD SOULLESS BASTARDS!
  • pcpimpster, on 06/17/2009, -1/+10I just buried you... because you not are as witty as you thought...
  • inactive, on 06/17/2009, -1/+10I was once refunded 5,000$ by Google because they caught up the guy clicking my ads was the site owner where my site was being advertised - His site was poorly optimized and used to get massive traffic. His original CTR was around 0.05% and to maintain 2% he used to keep clicking my ads by using - Proxies etc. His payout was cancelled and I was refunded .
  • ATL, on 06/20/2009, -0/+8*****, gold farmers!
  • MacHarborGuy, on 06/17/2009, -0/+8okay, so lets say the lock on my front door is defective and I didn't know that it was, I just figured that I paid for a good lock, and it appeared to work correctly. However, someone else knew the precise way to break the lock, get into my house and steal stuff. Do we just let the thief get a pass because the lock was faulty and the lock maker made a lock that could be broken?

    Just because the system could be exploited doesn't mean someone should have exploited it. Both Microsoft and WoWMine are at fault here. Really, the advertisers that lost their ad budgets have far more reason to sue both WoWMine AND Microsoft.
  • Kiboney, on 06/17/2009, -1/+91^10000th power?...
  • rinote, on 06/17/2009, -3/+11Who knew that stomping out your competition was only a mouse click away?(^ 100000 power)
  • thesatorialist, on 06/17/2009, -0/+8Dugg for "A quick check of court records confirms that this is among the nerdiest scams ever." (FTA)
  • rinote, on 06/17/2009, -0/+8I could've used someone like you in one of my math classes.
  • KraftDinner101, on 06/17/2009, -1/+9But, they're fight FOR their customers. They're taking the click defrauders to court, so that their customers can't rest easy knowing justice has been served. I say bravo, Microsoft.
  • inactive, on 06/17/2009, -2/+10Your comment is so insightful! You should be awarded the best comment of the year award!
  • rossisdead, on 06/17/2009, -2/+9@darkism: I know, it's like Microsoft is so evil they won't even let you change the default search engine!
  • tommyny04, on 06/17/2009, -4/+11just like how Google is the default search engine for Firefox.

    please next time, just shut the ***** up.
  • Solkre, on 06/17/2009, -0/+7I hope Microsoft gave the attacked companies credit for the fraud clicks.
  • thirteenlisk, on 06/17/2009, -1/+8Are you... JOKING????
  • SkittlesUSA, on 06/17/2009, -0/+7If anybody knows how to do click the same thing over and over for hours and hours, it is gold farmers on a grind.
  • Clbull, on 06/17/2009, -0/+7Although I habitually use Google, I have to say that Bing is a very good alternative to Google. Maybe not quite a "Google killer", but a decent search engine nonetheless.
  • xxl3w, on 06/17/2009, -0/+7It took a lab experiement to figure out Microsoft is trying to make money?

    Can you do me a favor? There's this up and coming store. I'm trying to figure out if they're trying to make money or just try to provide a service for free? The name of the store is Wal-mart. THANKS IN ADVANCE FOR THE VALIANT RESEARCH!!
  • OLTP, on 06/17/2009, -1/+8Hmm, that's not going to work very well as a verb. Adding the -ed makes it "binged" like "I just binged and purged because my bulemia relapsed".
  • zyklon, on 06/17/2009, -0/+6Hopefully they don't spend all the money in one place.
  • inactive, on 06/17/2009, -0/+6Yes. Assuming their TOS is similar to Google's.
  • Rikkochet, on 06/17/2009, -0/+6123, I swear, you're my new favourite person on Digg.
    I applaud your keen interest and research done into computers and technology and the steps you take to help educate us all.
  • stuffradio, on 06/17/2009, -2/+8Lol@123, you sound like an Apple fanboy gone wrong!
  • jdames1980, on 06/17/2009, -0/+6I'm pretty sure that yes, it probably does. Those pesky lawyers think of everything!
  • LiquidIse, on 06/17/2009, -2/+7Good for you. You should take up english and punctuation next.
  • xxl3w, on 06/17/2009, -0/+5Could this "special" program be called notepad.exe? How stable are you, mentally? I understand you might not understand these questions but it takes much experience in social engineering to understand the previous queries. Thanks for the comment though!
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