A massive click fraud operation, believed to be the largest ever uncovered, has been effectively shut down, potentially saving advertisers millions of dollars per year.
The fraud ring, called DormRing1 because of its association with Chinese college students, consisted of thousands of publisher websites that generated fake ad traffic for the sole purpose of defrauding ad networks and advertisers. If undetected, the operation would have cost advertisers more than $3 million in wasted advertising over the course of a year.
The ring was identified and shut down by traffic analytics firm Anchor Intelligence, which uncovered the ring after gaining exclusive access to bulletin boards on Chinese social networks.