According to Click Forensics, company that specializes in traffic quality management, in the second quarter of 2008 PPC (pay-per-click) fraud figures have maintained a relatively stable level of 16.2%. The data has been collected from more than 4,000 online advertisers and agencies and it shows that fraudsters prefer to use botnets rather than hire a human clicker and pay that individual for the services he provides.

Tom Cuthbert, president of Click Forensics, comments: "Although click fraud rates were relatively unchanged in the second quarter, we found that the methods used to commit click fraud have become increasingly more sophisticated and difficult to detect. The threat from botnets is the biggest concern as they have grown to cause over one quarter of all click fraud. Online advertisers should be extra vigilant in watching for traffic from botnets in their search marketing campaigns."

For the first two quarters of 2008, click fraud has maintained a steady level of about 16%, 16.3% in Q1 and 16.2% in Q2 to be more accurate. Compared to the second quarter of 2007, when a rate of 15.8% was recorded, there has been a 0.4% increase.

One of the most interesting finds of the study is the fact that more than a quarter of all click fraud traffic was generated by botnets. The largest amounts of traffic originated from China, Russia and France (note that this ranking refers to countries outside North America).

One of the reasons why e-crime is on the increase is the fact that more and more people are getting a PC and start surfing the web. In China for example, the number of people that got an ADSL subscription since the beginning of the year has exceeded the 4 million mark. These newcomers to the IT world are not security oriented enough to stay protected from all the numerous threats one can encounter online, and since there are so many novice, infection prone users, their influence on the threatscape can be significant. Just to put things in perspective, about 710,000 new users subscribed to China Telecom on a monthly basis, since the start of 2008.