Man Arrested For Trying To Blackmail Google

from the feeling-lucky? dept

Late last week, federal agents arrested a guy who was trying to blackmail Google. He claimed to have written a piece of software that would click on Google ads in a way that they appeared to be legitimate. He said if Google didn't pay him $100,000 and possibly hire him for consulting purposes, he would sell the software to the top 100 spammers. In recorded meetings with Google employees, he even joked "this feels like a blackmail session." The reporter for the article appears to have been a bit confused, because it says the program would click on "pop-up ads" the search engine generated on content sites. Of course, Google doesn't serve pop-up ads - so they probably just mean the regular contextual ads Google serves. Still, you have to wonder how the guy thought he could possibly get away with this. Of course, it also makes you wonder who else actually has created applications that can generate legitimate-looking click-throughs on Google ads - and thought better than to tell Google about it.

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