Click Laundering

Those ads on the side of a website aren't there for decorations. Advertisements are there because they are needed for the website to make money. It's similar to television commercials but instead every time a person clicks on the internet ad the website makes some money. This seams to be a good way for both the website owner and the advertiser, although RedOrbit found a way to exploit this and gain more money.

Microsoft is suing the science news website RedOrbit and their president Eric Ralls, for engaging in a click laundering scheme to gain revenue from ads. Click laundering is an online advertising scam that occurs when a person or computer program imitates a user and clicks on an online ad to generate a "charge per click". This explains that RedOrbit was using a program to click on the Microsoft ad on their website in order for them to earn money from it. Every time any user clicks on the ad, Microsoft shares the profit with the publisher of the website.
Microsoft reported that between September and December 2008, RedOrbit received 75 clicks per day on ads placed there. The next year there was a drastic change from 75 to almost 10,000 clicks per day. This is obvious that something is not right, either 9,000 new people decided to click on an ad that month, or it was a program that clicked them.

How it Works
Click laundering is usually involved with the use of malware that delivers rogue search results to trick people into visiting websites where they click on an advertisement without them knowing they ever did it. This malware makes it seem like an actual website but instead when the link is opened up and the user clicks around they are actually clicking an ad. Some of these fake websites are IFRAMEs that causes people to click on ads. Click launderers can even disguise the fraudulent clicks to make it look like they wanted to visit the ad.

"Just like money laundering, in which the origins of ill-gotten gains are disguised as legitimate income, clicks from automated programs or virus-ridden computers are dressed up as real clicks by real customers, i.e., clicks that advertisers pay for," Cranton wrote. This quote explains how click laundering has the same concept of money laundering and it was interesting because I never would of expected it to be on the Internet.
Microsoft is seeking unspecified damages, and no court date has been set yet.