they have away of getting your ip even through proxies
meanwhile tiny people with weird eyes and funny writing are hammering adsense and other networks with 1mil+ zombie botnets. and i'm not talking about this which is the newbier way. dont be upset, google needs the money they stole from you to pay smart people solve unsolvable problemsmeanwhile slightly adapted spam techniques from 2006 still work in the SE if you do it right.
all google has is scare tactics and misinformation. if they loose that they probably loose everything.
back to the + points for them - they do have best network of this type and SE even with all the BH stuff going on. fact is they make money, advertisers make money, publishers make money. win-win-win. so even an incident that would affect their image/trust wouldnt crash them because money talks. i have a buddy who was making tens of thousands from adsense with thousands of spam sites. all 100% spam. they would ban individual sites from time to time, he'd read a new domain same day. they never banned his account. this was a while ago so maybe now they're more aggressive but whatever. were there's will there's a way.
Ok all fair points. So let's turn this on its head:
What if I were to target a competitor? Rather than clicking on my ads I decided to click on his. Won't he then get his account banned?
I have been lurking here for quite a while and never post, but this thread kind of got me.
I am a member of 3 separate click exchange groups, and know of another 3 of bad quality I avoid. Not only is click fraud easy to get away with, but the biggest earner in my inner circle netted over 1k this month on his own, with minimal work. Even better, 1k is considered small potatoes to the big players Ive been involved with. What I mean to say is, everyone saying its not possible just doesn't know what they are talking about. No offense.
Click fraud can also be automated, and has been in the past with varying degrees of success. I am currently working on a method using perl to do this.
Also of interest to OP: go to wikipedias page for "Click Fraud" do ctrl + f and search on the page for "michael Anthony Bradley." He was arrested for trying to "extort google" after creating software to 100% circumvent googles algorithm to catch click fraudsters.
Hope I helped
MAC Address of modem, PC, monitor, shit, probably even your mouse. Google has figured out how to detect all of this. The days of simply changing your IP are a distant oasis, buddy.