A spambot is a string of malicious code that is programmed by hackers to perform certain tasks on specific sites. Nowadays, bots are programmed to mimic human behaviour on digital platforms such as filling in information to a subscription form, clicking on an advertisement or leaving comments on a forum.

Unfortunately, the cost and effectiveness of digital advertising is determined by the number of views, clicks and impressions. If an automated tool like a spambot interacts with the same online banner again and again, it can inflate the budget of advertisers and hinder the effectiveness of advertising campaigns.

Although fraudsters are constantly coming up with new ways to fool the system, technology is also evolving to tackle this issue. REM and Passive Monitoring are two such examples.

What is REM?

It is an analysis software designed to detect fake engagement, such as spambots, on the Internet. Bots usually act concisely, with an intention, while human behaviour is marred by irregularity — people randomly move their cursors when browsing websites and often complete online forms slowly. With REM, the irregularity of human actions is considered natural while typical repetitive bot activity is not treated as a genuine response.

However, considering that the digital world today is rapidly advancing, bots might just be programmed to act more human-like and challenge the verification system of REM.

How does Passive Monitoring work?

Passive Monitoring is another form of surveillance for recognizing fraudulent and standardized user action. It requires a device on the network to collect statistics for the analysis of site performance. By examining the traffic flow on a website, Passive Monitoring can determine when multiple users perform similar or repeated behaviour within a certain period of time; it can then be concluded that users performing such similar or exact actions are bots following the same command. Thus, this resolves the problem of distinguishing human-like click frauds from genuine user performance.

Fraud prevention

Making use of the above technology (both REM and Passive Monitoring), the NOIZ network monitors any deliberate user action and filters out spam bot traffic.

The difference in engagement between bots and humans in the NOIZ community is measured to prevent spam activity. In the NOIZ token economy — consisting of consumers, advertisers, publishers and social impact organisations — investigative software can keep track of the NOIZ token transaction flow.

Based upon changing criteria, any NOIZ wallet can be randomly selected for checking the existence of bots. Compared to consumers who would spend a portion of their tokens for redeeming discounts from advertisers or publishers, the bots may transfer all the tokens in one single transaction. Alternatively, they may never donate tokens to any social impact organisation. Voting for actions in the NOIZ economy is less likely to be carried out by fraudsters as well. Real users are likely to vote against wrongful ads or unethical business practices.

Thus, user activity is closely monitored to prevent spam bot activity from affecting the efficacy of ads or dirtying data for publishers.

NOIZ ad network is making an effort to make advertising campaigns more effective and efficient by revamping the ecosystem of digital advertising and eliminating fraud traffic.

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