Microsoft’s Lawsuit Against click fraud Scam

In a recent event, software major Microsoft Corp has filed a lawsuit against three individuals based in Vancouver, accusing them of breaching Microsoft’s adCenter contract through a click fraud to make profit.  The suite was filed in a U.S. federal court in Seattle against the three individuals- Eric Lam, Gordon Lam and Melanie Suen, and companies that they control. According to sources Microsoft suffered a loss of $750,000 due to the click fraud scheme.

The scheme involves large groups of people or automated computer scripts click on online advertisements without having any interest in the services or product that is being advertised. The scheme was designed to defraud competitors by clicking on their on-line ads, promoting auto insurance and World of Warcraft on-line game. Microsoft exposed the fraud by tracing the source of the allegedly fraudulent traffic back to the defendants. The Redmond company accused that advertisements for the websites of defendants dislodged the advertisements of their competitors. Such activities not only hurts the performance of the ads, but also declines their rankings.