Microsoft sues RedOrbit over alleged 'click laundering' fraud

The lawsuit names RedOrbit, a science news aggregator, as defendant, while a second suit names John Does to cover multiple unknown defendants who allegedly participated in click laundering on Microsoft's AdCenter network, Microsoft said in a statement.

The redOrbit Knowledge Network is an online community specifically for those with an interest in science, space, health and technology.

Microsoft said it discovered the potential fraud early in 2009 when it noticed hits from RedOrbit.com spiked from an average of 75 a day to around 10,000 a day, said Brad Smith, general counsel for Microsoft.

{Note: RedOrbit currently ranks around 4,000 on Alexa for USA traffic.}

{Opinion and I don't consider myself an expert so take with a grain of salt: 75 clicks a day is way too low for any site that actually gets traffic. So the question rises was RedOrbit having their clicks overwritten and cedited to someone else before the spike or did Microsoft have some other kind of problem in their network.}

RedOrbit President Eric Ralls denied the allegations.

"RedOrbit does not, nor has it ever, engaged, assisted in, or condoned click fraud," he said in a statement on Friday. "We are disappointed that Microsoft has made these completely baseless allegations and intend to defend against them vigorously."

"Microsoft asked RedOrbit to help in a beta test of its PubCenter platform, and the site did so for about five months, beginning in September 2008," according to Ralls.

"An anomalous click spike occurred over a brief period of time in January 2009, and we immediately worked with Microsoft to identify the reasons for the occurrence, including providing them with complete access to our logs," he said. "At the time, Microsoft did not conclude that there was any suspicious activity on the part of RedOrbit, and we discontinued working with [Microsoft]."

Click fraud called "click laundering" is a bot system of getting credit for clicks on ads that were made by botnets or unsuspecting users on a site set up for that purpose.

Microsoft also filed a separate suit in the same court against 20 unnamed people related to fraud on sites operated by HelloMetro.