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Cyber Risks · Krebs on Security

Pay Up, Or We’ll Make Google Ban Your Ads

Summary: An email-based extortion scheme targets website owners running Google AdSense banner ads, demanding $5,000 in bitcoin in exchange for a promise not to flood the publisher's site with bot traffic designed to trigger Google's anti-fraud systems and suspend the AdSense account. The message warns that AdSense algorithms will detect the traffic pattern as fraudulent, that revenue will be refunded to advertisers, and that a second flood could lead to a permanent ban; Google called it a classic threat of sabotage, said such sabotage is extremely rare in practice, and pointed to detection mechanisms and a help center form for publishers.

Why it matters: The extortionists are betting that a $5,000 payment looks cheaper than losing a publisher's main advertising revenue for the month or more it can take AdSense to lift a ban, and one recipient's own invalid traffic report had already risen substantially.

Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗

Topics
Fraud & Scams
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