Click fraudsters have expanded their crime from North America to UK and Ireland.

Polygraph, a cybersecurity company helping advertisers detect and prevent click fraud, is warning companies in the UK and Ireland that their online advertisements are at risk of click fraud.

Click fraud is a scam which steals billions of pounds from advertisers every year. Criminals create fake websites, and monetize the content using online adverts. Instead of waiting for genuine visitors to click on the ads, they use bots – software pretending to be human – to generate fake clicks. Each of these clicks steals a few pounds from unsuspecting advertisers. Multiply this by thousands of fake websites, and billions of fake clicks, and the losses to advertisers are huge.

According to Trey Vanes, chief marketing officer at Berlin-based Polygraph, click fraud used to mainly affect US advertisers.

“In the past, most click fraud targeted advertisers in the US, mainly due to the size of its market,” said Vanes. “However, we’re now seeing more and more criminals expanding the fraud to other countries, including the UK and Ireland. What concerns us is most advertisers in the British Isles aren’t aware of click fraud, meaning they haven’t taken steps to protect themselves.”

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Most advertising networks have some form of click fraud detection built into their systems, but Vanes says these systems are insufficient.

“The advertising networks are in the business of serving adverts, they’re not in the business of fraud detection. As an example, if criminals use a technology called ‘puppeteer-extra-plugin-stealth’, they can bypass most advertising networks’ fraud detection systems. What this means is if a criminal is using ‘puppeteer-extra-plugin-stealth’, which many are, they can generate fake clicks on your ads and steal your ad budget,” said Vanes.

Vanes recommends using a click fraud detection service like Polygraph to protect your ads against click fraud.

“Polygraph’s bread and butter is detecting click fraud, so we’re able to detect and block even the most sophisticated criminals. We help advertisers detect click fraud, block click fraud, and get click fraud refunds from the advertising networks. We make it easy for advertisers to stay protected, so they don’t need to worry about click fraud,” said Vanes.

Polygraph’s click fraud detection service includes detecting which ad keywords are being targeted by criminals, flagging scam websites which are generating fake clicks, and catching even the most cutting-edge click fraud bots.

“Advertisers are welcome to try Polygraph free of charge, no credit card required, so they can see for themselves how easy it is to protect their ad budgets from click fraud,” added Vanes.

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