Will Google Begin Prosecuting For Click Fraud?
I was recently speaking to a friend who was trying to set up a new Adsense account. He was complaining about all the hoops he had to jump through to get his account set up.
I guess once your account reaches $50, Adsense locks down your account and doesn’t allow you to get paid until you complete two more steps.
In the first step, Adsense mails a PIN to the address listed on your account. You then have to login to your Adsense account and enter the PIN into a form.
In the second step, they call the phone number associated with your account and have you enter a second PIN that they give you when you login to your account.
It’s been almost two years since I set up my Adsense account, but I don’t remember having to do any of that. Maybe my memory is getting bad…
I guess they want to make sure that you own the address and telephone number that you gave them, but why? This is obviously costing Google some money (setting up the automated phone system and mailing out postcards) so I wonder what the motivation is.
The only thing that comes to mind is Google may start prosecuting for click fraud and they want to make sure they give their lawyers the correct contact information.
Anybody have any other ideas why Adsense is spending money to make sure your address and phone number are correct?
Related Posts
An Interesting Referer
Blackhat Friendly PPC
Reuters’ $150K Mistake
Trying Out AdBrite
Speak Your Language
I recently signed up for an account and I have yet to have to deal with any sort of issues like that. Click Fraud is a very expensive business and google really should be looking out for themselves. Maybe all of those who try to make a quick buck will finally get caught and make life easier for all of us who use our adsense accounts honestly. Well I hope that is how it works out.
I’m curious, has your account reached $50 yet?
Yeah A few weeks ago I had surpassed the 50$ mark
[…] I was browsing through my stats when I noticed a peculiar referer looking at my recent post about whether or not Google is going to begin prosecuting for click fraud. […]