'Click Fraud' Threatens Foundation of Web Ads - washingtonpost.com

It appears that a pay-per-click campaign's worst nightmares have come true.
'Click Fraud' Threatens Foundation of Web Ads - washingtonpost.com: "'You don't make tons of money,' Park said. 'But once you start clicking and you get actual payments, it becomes an addiction.'

Park is one of thousands of people around the world who receive e-mailed lists of Web sites every day to click on for cash. Operators of these fast-growing 'pay to read' networks and similar 'pay to click' rings say they provide a genuine audience for advertisers, but Internet fraud experts disagree. They say the networks fuel click fraud, which means using bogus clicks to pump up revenue artificially for search engines and their affiliated Web sites.

In the past year, industry analysts say, new forms of click fraud have emerged from the shadows of masked operations into plain view on the Internet. Dozens of Web sites offer to pay people to sit and click on ads, or to type certain words into search engines for hours at a time. Some sites have forums where people swap click-fraud tips."