Botnets and Mobile Fraud on the Rise

With multiple hundreds of millions of dollars lost to bot traffic every month, it should come as no surprise that there is an increased incentive for scammers to avoid fraud detection, which means, they will continue to get better at what they do. Likewise, there is also an increased incentive for digital advertising networks to protect themselves and their human buyers. According to Solve Media’s recently released Bot Traffic Market Advisory update, malicious bot traffic is on the rise, including mobile bot traffic. The extensive bot fraud that undermines the security of the web, steals publisher content, creates spam assets and posts inappropriate content. It is affecting both the digital ad industry and the publishers, who risk reputations as well as waste time and money spent on marketing to non-existent buyers but very real entities, known as illegal botnets. The company’s report revealed that suspicious activity remained above 40% in Q4 2012 and Q1 2013. The analysis showed that 29% of the suspicious activity in Q1 was the result of bot traffic, up from 25% in Q4. The update additionally revealed that 29% of mobile traffic acted suspiciously in Q1 2013, 14% of which was confirmed as bots.