SEC Looking Into The Clickfraud Issue?

from the for-what-purpose? dept

Click fraud in pay-per-click offerings is nothing new. In fact, at this point, all of the articles on click fraud are getting quite tiresome. They all say the same thing, and none seem to suggest much of a solution to the problem. However, someone who prefers to remain anonymous submitted a story saying that all that press attention on click fraud has made the SEC interested in looking into the issue to see if Google and others are inflating their revenue and stock price by fraud. There's no formal investigation, but it's being described as "on the commissions' radar screen." That's interesting, but it seems like it would be extraordinarily difficult for the SEC to go after companies like Google or Yahoo -- who do try to stop clickfraud. It's not something that you can just snap your fingers and stop. This is really no different than individual lawsuits that have been filed against Google claiming they could stop click fraud if they wanted to. If someone could explain how, it might help. It would be very surprising if the SEC really went after anyone for this issue.

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    Flat soda, Feb 2nd, 2006 @ 11:01am

    Maybe the point isn't going to be about the ability to stop click fraud if they wanted to. Or how that prevention might be acheived. But rather should the SEC look into the setting up of a business practice that by it's very design is open to fraudulent activity. In other words, the pay-per-click revenue scheme is just not a viable option if they can't protect it from fraud. No matter how hard they try, they can't ensure against fraud to a reasonable extent. A very very loose analogy would be the prohibition of Ponzi schemes.

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