After posting about 73% bot traffic statistics, I kept getting the same question: "What does this actually look like?"
So here's the answer. Actual click farm footage. Hundreds of phones running 24/7 automation scripts.
Each device simulates 10-20 "real users" with unique IPs (residential proxies), different device fingerprints, and varied behavior patterns. Your analytics can't tell the difference. Neither can Google or Facebook's fraud detection.
The scary part? This is probably a SMALL operation. Some farms run 50,000+ devices.
At DataCops we're researching network-level detection because traditional methods are failing. When you see 500 "different" residential IPs with identical TCP patterns and synchronized timing signatures, that's not 500 people it's orchestrated fraud routing through compromised residential connections.
The real damage isn't just wasted ad spend. It's business owners making terrible decisions based on corrupted data. They see traffic but no conversions, so they conclude their product sucks, their pricing is wrong, their website needs redesigning. They change everything trying to "fix" their conversion rate when 70% of their traffic was never human to begin with.
How many businesses have failed because they were making strategic decisions based on fundamentally fake data?
Whole cities are built in Southeast Asia to facilitate scams. Moreover, if the problem is fixed, hundreds of thousands will probably die: both of hunger, because they've been doing it for like 15+ years and now their population won't be sustained without scam cash, and simply for being killed by their owners for no longer being needed.
Solution? The West needs to radically reduce levels of trust. Or, have its internet enclosed within itself, like in North Korea, just in reverse. Which will be difficult because how do you go about countries like Hungary that has no physical borders with 'good' countries and at the same time, will be happy to help 'bad' ones?
After posting about 73% bot traffic statistics, I kept getting the same question: "What does this actually look like?"
So here's the answer. Actual click farm footage. Hundreds of phones running 24/7 automation scripts.
Each device simulates 10-20 "real users" with unique IPs (residential proxies), different device fingerprints, and varied behavior patterns. Your analytics can't tell the difference. Neither can Google or Facebook's fraud detection.
The scary part? This is probably a SMALL operation. Some farms run 50,000+ devices.
At DataCops we're researching network-level detection because traditional methods are failing. When you see 500 "different" residential IPs with identical TCP patterns and synchronized timing signatures, that's not 500 people it's orchestrated fraud routing through compromised residential connections.
The real damage isn't just wasted ad spend. It's business owners making terrible decisions based on corrupted data. They see traffic but no conversions, so they conclude their product sucks, their pricing is wrong, their website needs redesigning. They change everything trying to "fix" their conversion rate when 70% of their traffic was never human to begin with.
How many businesses have failed because they were making strategic decisions based on fundamentally fake data?
Whole cities are built in Southeast Asia to facilitate scams. Moreover, if the problem is fixed, hundreds of thousands will probably die: both of hunger, because they've been doing it for like 15+ years and now their population won't be sustained without scam cash, and simply for being killed by their owners for no longer being needed.
Solution? The West needs to radically reduce levels of trust. Or, have its internet enclosed within itself, like in North Korea, just in reverse. Which will be difficult because how do you go about countries like Hungary that has no physical borders with 'good' countries and at the same time, will be happy to help 'bad' ones?