16 June 2009 | Author: L. Sutherland Head of Media Content

Microsoft to tackle click-fraud in court

In an attempt to battle the unscrupulous fraudsters who manipulate clicks on Web advertisements, software giant Microsoft filed a civil complaint on Monday. The New York Times reports that the complaint was against Eric Lam, Gordon Lam and Melanie Sue of Vancouver, British Columbia, as well as a number of corporation names and unnamed parties.

Microsoft first identified a problem back in March 2008 when unusual traffic spikes proved a cause for investigation. This eventually led the company to believe that Eric Lam and a number of cohorts were working on a system that would see traffic falsely directed to competitors' sites. The competitors would then have to pay for these clicks, depleting their advertising budget and leaving Lam's interests - or those of his employers - in a preferable position.

Traffic analysis from ClickForensics indicates that one in every seven clicks on an advert is thought to be fraudulent, so it's no surprise that Microsoft is searching for a way to hamper the process of its perpetrators. The Silicon Valley stalwart is seeking damages of at least $750,000 in an attempt to hike the price for those attempting to get away with click-fraud.

According to the NYT, Tim Cranton, associate general counsel for Microsoft, said: "We have decided to become more active in the commercial fraud area on the enforcement side.

"The theory is you can change the economics around crime or fraud by making it more expensive."

Therefore, it seems likely that Microsoft is not just attempting to recoup losses but aims to fundamentally change the playing field. The NYT reports that Jeremy Fain, the vice president of industry services for the Interactive Advertising Bureau said: "Legally, if you commit wire fraud or mail fraud, there's a lot of very stiff penalties for that, where we don't have a lot of precedents, legally, from an Internet perspective yet.

"It's really meant to try to create more of a legal precedent, and more of a legal library of cases to draw from in the future."

If Microsoft can achieve its ends in this case, one small corner of internet skulduggery might just find itself a little more vulnerable than it would like to be.

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