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Last year, the average click fraud rate of pay-per-click advertisements appearing on search engine content networks rose to 19.2 percent for the last quarter of 2006, the highest yet, according to Tom Cuthbert, CEO of Click Forensics. As detailed in Part 1 of this series, Internet advertisers and security pros are seeing increases in click fraud activities that siphon both sales and advertising dollars from vendors. Click fraud occurs when online advertisers pay search engine companies and advertisement Web publishers a fee for each click made by either real or phony would-be customers.

A more recent form of click fraud involves criminal gangs in foreign countries that set up rogue Web sites that run the same ads and hire people to click on these unauthorized ads, thus diverting payment to the rogue Web site owner. Technology News: E-Commerce: Click Fraud: A Growing Nuisance for Web Advertisers, Part 2