Clickprints on the Web

Wharton professor Balaji Padmanabhan and Yinghui Yang, a professor at the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Davis have published a paper entitled, "Clickprints on the Web: Are There Signatures in Web Browsing Data?" They reveal how it is possible to identify unique users based merely on their browsing behaviour.

These professors are on the right track, but they are looking at finding click patterns of individuals more so than finding suspicious click behaviour. This could be useful for "confirming" that a single user at a multi-user IP address is generating invalid clicks.

AdSense publisher clicks ads on her site; sues Google

Now this isn't click fraud in the usual sense but a funny story about a woman whose AdSense account was cancelled because she admitted clicking ads on her own site. She mustn't have read the ToS or heard of the preview tool.

The thread in Geek Village is funny too.