Proxy Problems

[Tubz]

The seller on eBay suggested this. Basically what I do is leave the computer on and do "Pay Per Click" meaning.....a group of search engines want to become as popular as one's like Google. So what they do is pay you a couple of cents per every click of some link on their search engines. HOWEVER, the problem comes in now. I have a program in which its like a browser, but clicks on the links "by itself"....

Its called "Test 33"....so what I did was register, for this "pay per click" program, then I got my URL. Set it up in the program, turned the link on in Test 33. Looped it, and set 6 windows. And it would start "Pay Per Clicking" now the problem is, it does this cotinuously for a couple of hours. Then it stops, and shows a blank white screen.

I've been having pep talks with the seller of this thing on eBay through email. And he finally said, maybe proxy problems. I do have a Linksys router with probably a firewall. In addition, I have Windows Firewall up. I made an exception in it for Test 33. Now what is a proxy, and is that the problem, and how can I fix this?

So that I can continue to pay per click, and I won't get that white screen anymore after two hours? Please, help is appreciated, thanks.

-Win XP, Home Edition, SP2
-Linksys 802.11g Wireless USB Network Adapter (this computer)
-Wireless PCI Network Card (laptop)
-Server: Linksys Wireless-G 802.11 Router

Any other info you need, ask me, thanks again...

[Torkell]

I believe what you're doing is known as click fraud, and you're probably seeing their efforts to stop this from happening. Companies don't like it when people do what you're doing, as it doesn't benefit them. There may be specific laws against this, but if all else fails they can probably get you under the Computer Misuse Act (roughly paraphrased: you're not allowed to even look at our computers unless we say so) (UK-only, other countries probably have equivalent laws). So you might want to rethink your automated clicking.

Anyway, a proxy is a special server designed to forward web requests. Proxy servers can also be configured to cache request, to reduce bandwidth usage. These tend to be used as part of coporate LAN systems to reduce the bandwidth used, control web access, and log visited sites. You also commonly see them in schools and universities - my secondary school used Censornet (a combined proxy, web cache and filtering system), and my current university uses a proxy server to reduce bandwidth usage and restrict internet access to authorised users. A firewall is not a proxy server, nor is a router, NAT.

Your Linksys router does NAT (network address translation, also known as IP masquerading, it's the technology that lets multiple computers appear as one to the outside world), and has a hardware firewall designed to prevent most attacks. Being a hardware firewall, it should not affect any of the programs on your system (hardware firewalls block on a per-port basis, not a per-application one). The router does not have a proxy server. Your ISP may have one, but the fact that your clicking program is working at all implies that it is correctly configured for whatever system your ISP uses. So I think we can safely rule out proxy problems, which leaves a buggy program or unhappy advertisers. I'd guess the latter.

[Tubz]

I believe what you're doing is known as click fraud, and you're probably seeing their efforts to stop this from happening. Companies don't like it when people do what you're doing, as it doesn't benefit them. There may be specific laws against this, but if all else fails they can probably get you under the Computer Misuse Act (roughly paraphrased: you're not allowed to even look at our computers unless we say so) (UK-only, other countries probably have equivalent laws). So you might want to rethink your automated clicking.

That makes no sense at all, what you just said. See if you still agree, after reading this...
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=52536&item=5406448866

Anyway, I paid for it. And I already read numerous times, that this is totally legal. Why would companies be I-Rate about this, it makes no sense. If Google wants to start this up, they can do that. As far as I know this is totally legal, and its not a Pyramid Scheme or anything. I actually slighty see your point.

http://www.ppcappraisal.com

This is the site, where all this is made possible.

[Torkell]

Wikipedia has an article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_fraud) about this. Oh, and you might be interested to know that PPCappraisal actually lists in their terms and conditions:

Fraud is a serious offense, and will be treated as such. Fraud is defined as any action that intentionally attempts to create sales, leads, or click-throughs using robots, frames, iframes, scripts, or manually "refreshing" of pages, for the sole purpose of creating commissions. ANY ATTEMPTED FRAUD OR FRAUD WILL RESULT IN MEMBERSHIP TERMINATION AND VOIDED COMMISSIONS.

What you paid for was a program someone wrote to do this for you. I'd like to point out that with notepad, internet explorer and 5 minutes, you could achieve the exact same thing without paying any money. No, I won't tell you how.

[Tubz]

I know that the program is illegal, I read that in the terms. But what about PPC itself?