ADVANCED: How Does T4Me's Bot-Blocker Work?
We are the only Traffic Agency with a bot-blocking system directly integrated into our services. This means we do not pay for fake clicks, and neither do you.
How accurate is T4Me's bot-blocking system?
Our own internal testing, and analysis of millions of clicks our customers have received, indicates that our filtering system is over 99.9% accurate.
This means that less than 1 out of every 1,000 blocked clicks is being improperly blocked. You may be thinking "who cares, I don't care what you block as long as I don't pay for it", but this is stinkin' thinkin' for a couple reasons.
First of all, it's important for us to create win-win arrangements between our advertisers and publishers. The guys selling us clicks would be very upset if we blocked real clicks because we don't pay for whatever is blocked.
Secondly, you want all the real clicks you can possible pay for. These are the people that opt-in, signup, and give you money!
What kind of data and detection systems are used?
T4Me's filtering system incorporates the very best fraud detection systems available today.
We've tested many click-fraud systems out there and found most of them to be wildly inaccurate - mainly due to their habit of blocking entire IP ranges when they identify a single "bad" IP address.
We actually incorporate a number of methods, including spamtrap catchers, bot blockers, behavioral data (such as one person clicking a link 20 or 30 times), and even 3rd party data such as domain registration and IP allocation information from ICANN, ARIN and other official sources, to help identify ownership and relationships for and between various domains and IP addresses.
So how does the filtering system work?
Our system constantly monitors and analyzes the hundreds of thousands of clicks that T4Me users get each month along side with millions and millions of clicks from our detection partners. No traffic agency goes to these lengths.
We have literally over a dozen monitoring systems that constantly analyze not only every detail of every click, but actual click and user "behavior" including sessions, conversions, and lots more we just can't talk about publicly because it would give the bad guys too much information.
Many "friendly" automated processes and bots properly identify themselves, but this allows us to catch all the rest - the malicious bots, content scrapers and other automated processes that try to disguise themselves as legitimate web browsers.
Between our automated monitoring systems, input from customers like you, and lots of human oversight by our partners, the filtering system actually gets "smarter" and more accurate each and every day.
Why would a residential IP be filtered as a bot?
If you see that an IP address from a residential ISP such as Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, etc. was filtered as a bot, it generally means one of two things:
1. The user is using software to generate fake clicks, or
2. Their computer is infected with some type of malware and is currently part of a large botnet.
If you want us to take a look at a particular filtered IP, please report it to us via our on-site messaging system.
What should I know about Google proxies and filtering?
A proxy acts as an intermediary for requests from web browsers, and Google has lots of proxies they use in conjunction with various Google services ...
... including but not limited to Data Compression for mobile Chrome users, Google website previews, Google Translate, and Google Mobilizer just to name a few.
Here's what you need to know about Google proxies and T4Me's filtering system ...
Any time an end-user's request is routed through Google's proxies for any reason, Google adds an "X-Forwarded-For" header to the HTTP request which contains the user's actual IP address.
This allows T4Me to grab the user's actual IP address and process the click correctly, even though the request came from one of Google's proxy servers.
On the other hand, if a Google proxy request does not contain a valid "X-Forwarded-For" header that means the request did not come from a real user, but rather it came from one of Google's many, many automated systems i.e. a "bot."
You can identify these requests in T4Me logs because the hostname for such a request will always start with "google-proxy."
How can I help make the filtering system better?
We do want your help in making T4Me's filtering system as accurate as possible ... please let us know if you think something is 'wrong' and we will have our techs research it to the best of our ability.
For every click we store as much info as possible including the IP address, hostname, operating system, browser, device type, exact timestamp and more. So we are able to do deep-research if the need arises.
I hope this has been at least a little helpful, and I strongly recommend that you come back to our help section often for updates. Feel free to pass this info on to others who might learn from it as well.
And if you have any comments or helpful information related to this topic that we can add to this page, please don't hesitate to contact us.