

Amazon's Mechanical Turk Used for Fraudulent Activities - mattjung
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/amazons_mechanical_turk_used_for_fraud.php

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sh1mmer
This is an interesting problem. However self interest helps to reveal the
problem. Google has successfully banned rings of cheap labour used to generate
ad-sense income.

We had a conversation at work about how it would be much harder to stop people
using distributed methods like this to attack people. By, for example, soaking
up all your competitors' Ad Word budgets for the month with rogue clicks.

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mattjung
Yes, you can image ugly things with distributed methods like this. A problem
in this case is that it is difficult to draw the line between what is still
legal and what not. Paying people to add your web-page to delicious is
probably not illegal. Although it kind of fakes interest for a web-site that
may not exist, it is only a kind of indirect spamming with little effect on
single users - probably even less harmful than many SEO techniques. As you
said, interesting topic.

~~~
sh1mmer
It probably breaches the terms of service which wouldn't make it illegal but
it would be a civil offence. They could probably sue you for damages or loss
of income (due to loss of legitimate traffic) or some such.

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JeremyChase
Unethical but I don't think fraudulent.

This is an example people gaming the system, and IMHO through legal channels.
If search engines and social bookmarks integrate this content the burden is on
them to filter it.

Please don't take my comments to imply that I condone spamming, but in this
case I think a different resolution to the problem is in order.

jer

PS: I don't know what that resolution is. :)

