I immediately think "kaching" as well. However this article was published in March 2011, and I imagine the advertising world has evolved slightly to prevent this fraud from happening, so your scheme would have to be clever enough to outwit any changes. If the scheme has been exposed for two years I imagine there are more players utilizing this scheme in the fraud-market. Only way to know for sure is to try it yourself and learn from experience, in which case you'd be breaking the law and taking a risk.
maybe they've closed these holes, but click fraud has been an issue every since the earliest days of banner ads, so I'd be really surprised if it has been eliminated completely.
Yes, there will always be people that invest time/effort into figuring out how to exploit a system when there's money involved! I am sure there are still many exploits, it's just a matter of being more clever than the individual(s) that designed the system, and being willing to take the risk of indictment in case your scheme is discovered.
We stay pretty on top of things, and have a lot of data to look over for suspicious activity. Staying ahead of us means continually iterating methods, at which point, why not just get a job?
That said, it's nice to see this stuff separate the slick from the competent in the industry.
I'm curious what laws this breaks. Has anyone been prosecuted for similar click fraud? It seems like a contract dispute and the advertiser has the ability to not pay and perhaps come after the scammer for past losses, but it's a TOS violation more than a legal one.
Google is pretty famous for shutting the door on AdSense publishers without much of an appeals process, but I haven't heard of them pursuing anyone criminally. Google even let go a case that involved extortion (someone set on releasing click fraud software unless Google paid up).
I'm not sure what laws it breaks but the laws are so ambiguous you could really be charged with a wide variety of things all depending on how much the prosecution wants to put you away. Could be anything from money laundering to computer abuse to mail fraud depending on a lot of variables involved - and also very much depends on what country the person accused is from.
