https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdurWTJyjHE
A hypothetical comedy sketch. No agents, real or imagined, were harmed, interrogated or billed per click. ( Chances are if your from Africa your not looking to purchase a $4000 Software Package )
Picture it: you received a ” Bulletmail ” 9.11 warning and a windowless room somewhere in Ottawa. One flickering fluorescent tube. A double-double going cold. Two agents in identical grey suits sit across from me, and one of them slides over a manila folder stamped CLICKS: HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS.
“Mr. Katovic,” he says. “Define click fraud.”
And that’s where it goes sideways for them, because I can make this as easy or as difficult as they like.
The easy version
Click fraud is when somebody clicks an ad with no intention of ever buying anything, so the advertiser pays for nothing. Done. Everybody’s home by supper.
The difficult version
Well, Agent, what is a click? Is it the mouse button going down, or coming back up? If a bot clicks an ad in a forest and no conversion tag hears it, did it still cost four euros? If a phone three time zones away taps my ad at 3 a.m. and leaves in 0.4 seconds, is that fraud, curiosity or a thumb?
The second agent writes “THUMB?” on his notepad and underlines it twice.
Exhibit A has requested a lawyer.
What level of intelligence are we assuming here?
Here’s my question back to the room. If anyone, anywhere, ever planned to run up a click bill on a Canadian through Google, what level of intelligence were they expecting me to have? I gave them a handy menu:
- Level 1, Goldfish: every click is a customer. Wonderful. Spend more.
- Level 2, Golden retriever: notices the clicks, is simply happy to see them.
- Level 3, Raccoon: knows where the bins are and how to open the lids.
- Level 4, Me: timestamps, user agents, referrers and a fresh pot of coffee at 3 a.m.
I read log files the way other people read cottage novels. I have spreadsheets of my spreadsheets. When a visitor shows up with an Infinix phone, Chrome 153 and the attention span of a mayfly, I don’t get angry. I get a highlighter.
The agents exchange a look. The first one closes the folder. “We’ll be in touch.”
“Great,” I say. “On your way out, please click the ad. Slowly. I’m measuring.”
This is satire and entirely hypothetical. kevinkatovic.com is not affiliated with CSIS, the RCMP, Google or any government agency, and no real agent or person is accused of anything here. The featured image is an AI-generated illustration, not a real event.
First of all you dont understand my sense of humor which has to be tolerated…. Now what your going to need is a black guy that fooled the entire detachment at Courtenay…..
“ When it cost’s our officers personally thing’s can get a little violent around here ”
Will SpaceX and Tesla Merge?