Traffic laundering is a deceptive practice where fraudsters disguise low-quality or fake web traffic to make it appear legitimate. It's similar to money laundering, but instead of cleaning dirty money, fraudsters "clean" invalid traffic before selling it to advertisers.
How traffic laundering works
The process typically starts with obtaining low-quality or fraudulent traffic from suspicious sources. This could be from bot traffic, click farms, or malware-infected devices. The traffic then passes through a series of legitimate-looking websites.
These intermediate websites act as "cleaning" stations. They make the traffic appear more authentic by adding legitimate-looking referral data and behavioral signals. The cleaned traffic eventually reaches the target website, making it harder to detect its fraudulent origins.
Common traffic laundering techniques
- Domain spoofing: Creating fake versions of legitimate websites
- Cookie stuffing: Artificially adding tracking cookies to users' browsers
- Referrer masking: Hiding or changing the true source of traffic
- Traffic redistribution: Bouncing visitors through multiple sites
- Bot traffic mixing: Blending automated traffic with real human visitors
Impact on advertisers
Traffic laundering costs advertisers millions of dollars annually. When advertisers pay for this cleaned but fraudulent traffic, they waste their budget on fake impressions and clicks. This leads to skewed analytics and poor campaign performance.
How to protect against traffic laundering
Advertisers can protect themselves by implementing robust traffic monitoring systems. Working with reputable ad networks and traffic providers is essential. Regular audit of traffic sources and patterns can help identify suspicious activity.
Using advanced analytics tools that detect unusual patterns helps spot laundered traffic. These tools look for signs like impossible user behavior or suspicious referral chains.
