Microsoft and Google Browsers Had High Ad Fraud Rate, Study Claims

 Ad fraud activity is higher in some browsers made by Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. alphabet, according to a study by fraud detection company announcement FraudLogix.

Scammers can manipulate the web browser software for consumer financial benefit by malicious code that infects browsers and forced to load some Web pages. For advertisers this is bad news, as they may find themselves paying for small whos that can not be seen by real people.

To examine the role of browsers in this process, FraudLogix examined a sample of 135 individual online ad impressions million over seven days in July, and browsers were analyzed ads. The company has continued announcements of considered delivery ITS technology such as traffic or "bot" "non-human".

Browsers where fraudulent impressions were charged more browser versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer and Chrome Google's browser, the study found.

About 50% of impressions served to Internet Explorer during the study were traffic "non-human" FraudLogix said, compared to 20.5% of impressions published in the Google Chrome browser.

Microsoft and Google because each methodology FraudLogix, saying it is impossible to accurately measure the fraud at the browser.

"Search engines and malicious software often forge the chains of user agent to produce" false "traffic, which can be attributed to a particular browser," Microsoft said in a statement.

Google said in a statement, "When malware infects device or web browser someone, usually the infected machine can act as a fraudulent bot posing a browser, even if it is not installed on the infected machine . Accordingly, we have found that measuring results by the browser fraud was not a useful way to understand this problem. "

FraudLogix CEO Hagai Shechter acknowledged that infected computers can impersonate browsers, but said the company does not believe what happened in most of the cases were detected study.

Fraud cases are potentially higher for Chrome and Internet Explorer because of its widespread adoption, added Mr. Shechter. Other browsers may be more vulnerable, but make them less attractive targets because they have fewer users.

16.2% of overall traffic was examined FraudLogix Internet Explorer compared to 61% chromium.

A recent study by the National Association of Advertisers believes advertisers could lose $ 7 billion this year on ads will never see. Users can get an idea of their browsers have been infected since the Web pages can be loaded in the background without notice.

Other browsers tested during the FraudLogix survey, including Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari and Microsoft's latest browser, called Microsoft Edge.

Less than 5% of impressions delivered to all versions of browsers deemed fraudulent by FraudLogix.

Mr. Shechter said cases of fraudulent impressions were significantly lower for the most recent versions of Chrome browser, suggesting Google is fixing success "vulnerabilities" in their software. Many versions of the Chrome browser with the highest fraud rates are no longer supported by Google, and are used by a relatively small number of users.

"It seems that Google gets, and are against vulnerabilities and holes," said Shechter.

Regarding Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mr. Shechter said he was surprised that a browser version, Internet Explorer 11.0, contributed the highest percentage of false traffic in general.

This browser version was abandoned, but technically is still supported by Microsoft. Because of this, "security issues should be addressed and which are simply not seeing that," Mr. Shechter said.