Mobile Phones and Fraud

As mobile devices and content proliferate so does its threats. Increasingly malware is being aimed at mobile users - as well as the companies that advertise on these devices. New statistics from AdaptiveMobile find that the conversion rates of mobile spam are higher than PC-based spam. Worst of all is SMS, which has been found to generate more than $10 million in just three days (via the Telegraph).

History Repeats Itself?

Marketers that watched with dismay in the 1990s as spam became the dominant message in many people’s inboxes understand what this trajectory means: mobile advertising is in danger of becoming tuned out or blocked all together as users try to secure their devices. Click fraud via mobile devices is also proliferating, recent figures from Click Forensics show.

According to Paul Pellman, the chief executive of Click Forensics, the firm had begun seeing fraudulent clicks routed through mobile devices, like wireless Internet cards. (via the New York Times). This is problematic as such clicks are harder to detect than those coming from wired computers because the wireless card disguises the origin, he says.
Essentially they are lumped in with legitimate mobile users under a single originating address.