What is click spoofing - attribution fraud - Impact
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Web attribution fraud

Click spoofing

When advertisers rely on their publishers to self-report click events server-side, they are vulnerable to click spoofing. Unchecked, a malicious publisher may trigger a click tracking event in the absence of a legitimate click.

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How they do it

  1. Malicious publisher registers for an advertiser’s affiliate program
  2. User navigates to the publisher’s website
  3. User does not engage with an ad on the site
  4. User visits the forum page and views the signature
  5. Malicious publisher fires click-tracking event anyway, spoofing the user’s engagement
  6. After some time, user navigates to the advertiser’s website organically or via another valid partner’s promotional effort
  7. User completes a purchase
  8. Advertiser attributes credit to the malicious publisher, even though they provided no value in driving the sale
Click spoofing
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