In India, we have a significantly old banking industry and the industry has gone through a number of changes after liberalisation. However, the system is well maintained and supervised. But with the evolution in the methods of banking, the birth of several frauds has also been taken place. With the net innovation and development of technology, also the new approaches for ‘Digital Wrongdoings’ have evolved. The inspiration behind these digital frauds is merely the financial profits What does Cyber Crime mean? Cyber crime or Digital wrongdoings can be demonstrated as a violation which may include a target, source, a place, instrument, PC or some network which is used as a medium of fraud. As the digital transactions are getting constantly increased, such digital frauds are also going towards advanced levels only. In the last few years, the digital banking frauds are in full fledged state and India is not any behind. Along with it, an investigation by Juniper Exploration suggested that by 2019, the expenses of digital banking frauds could be of about 2.1 trillion worldwide. The figures were proved to be true somewhat because such frauds are constantly being raised. How Cyber Crimes affect Banking sector The spike in such cases in last few years is because of the upsurge in mobile phones having internet. We can use a number of online banking services in our mobile phones including paying service charges, web saving money, online shopping, or any kind of transactions. In some cases, if the hackers don’t get enough data, they attack the bank’s system in order to render their endeavours. In addition to the financial benefits, they also make an attempt to trade individual’s data which may include stolen web-based managing account, card numbers, authoritative access to the bank’s servers for exchange of cash and so on. This way, the whole digital wrongdoings affect the whole banking sector. India has a highest number of Digital Banking Frauds worldwide India has a higher number of people facing such banking frauds, in comparison to any other country citizens. According to a survey conducted by FIS concluded that about 18% of the Indian citizens have gone through a digital banking fraud in 2017. And, the minister of Information Technology said reported around 26,000 such cases with Indians in the year 2017 which resulted in a total theft of about 1.8 billion rupees. However, there were just 8% people affected by such frauds in Germany and even lesser which is 6% people reported such frauds in UK. As the people who majorly use digital banking are of the age group ranging from 27 to 37 years, therefore, 25% of the people in this age group have at least once reported digital banking frauds. Talking about the positive sides too. Reports suggested an increase in the adoption of online banking by Indian citizens which are even above the age of 53 years. However, it may also increase the risk of digital frauds. Reserve bank of India has been making attempts in order to limit the liabilities of customers when they face any fraudulent transaction. People can report their banking fraud within three days after such fraud. However, if you knowingly give the required information to some third person then you are not eligible to make such complaints. With the increasing cases of digital frauds in India, the country has started making some required attempts in this direction. The policemen of India have started being taught about tackling any case of digital frauds. The Karnataka Government, in 2003, instituted a Cyber Crime Cell where 1000 policemen will be enrolled for Cyber Crime Training Programs. Along with it, the Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra units of Police are actively collaborating with IT experts and data security experts which will eventually help in improving their investigation skills in cases related to digital frauds. Impacts of Cyber Crime on Society Even a single successful digital banking fraud can give a lot of implications on the society including financial loss, loss of trust and confidence of consumers, theft of personal information etc. The estimation of financial losses by such digital frauds is of about billions every year. The criminal fraud people by taking the advantage of technology in several ways. Internet gives them an opportunity to be hidden behind the shield of anonymity digitally. Cyber crimes affect our society in several way which can be offline or online. These are: Identity theft: Being a victim of digital frauds can give a lot of effects on one’s life. Scammers employ phishing which includes sending fake emails and getting their personal information somehow. And, when they give this information to the scammers, they can manage their account using the information. Security Loss: Such criminals attacks business also, whether they are small or large. They take over the servers of that company in order to steal all the information and thus use their system as per their convenience. Monetary Loss: There can be an immense loss from digital frauds. As the people are getting concerned of the traditional assets of attacking their cyber security, criminals are finding advanced ways to steal the money as well as the confidential data. Emotional Impacts: Criminals take advantage of secrecy, anonymity, which is provided to them by internet and make the financial theft from their banks itself. Such incidents may make the people feel traumatised. The studies have shown that the reactions of such cyber crimes generally include a feeling of being annoyed, angry and cheated. In most of the cases, people blame themselves for all this. Bottom Line However, people should think that they would mend their behaviour accordingly when they become victim of such crimes. Being aware is the only solution of decreasing these figures. There is a long list of huge scams occurred in India including Vijay Mallya scam, 2G spectrum scam, Nirav Modi PNB Fraud and so on. Being concerned and aware is the only way a common man can stay away from all such things.

A number of technologies were introduced for manipulation of images in the 19th century. And these were used in motion pictures later on. Such techniques got improved fast with the digital videos. Research conducted at academic institutions in the early 1990s helped in developing Deepfake technology. And, the developers fine-tuned this technology in online communities. In recent years, Deepfake has grabbed a lot of attention to be used in hoaxes, financial frauds and fake news. If we use the technology in a beneficial way, then it may come out to be good for the community. But the government had to limit and watch out for the illegal use of the Deepfake technology. What is Deepfake Technology? This technology refers to the creation of manipulated visual content which is generated with the help of sophisticated artificial intelligence. This technology helps in yielding modified images and sounds which appear completely real. In most of the cases, a person in an image or video is replaced with another person. Deep learning models, which is actually a sub-class in machine learning methods, are used in the creation of Deepfakes. These machine learning methods are generally based on artificial neural networks. How is Deepfake a big cyberthreat for our community? Deepfakes can be deceiving, hence they are considered as a threat to us. In 2018, a deepfaked video of Barack Obama was created which had an audio track synced with it and the audio track was by comedian Jorden Peele. Here, people objected to the election or political interference. It was said that there is not just political or military concern here, rather it had law enforcement, insurance and commerce concerns too. All these concerns were properly validated by an incident that took place in 2019. In this incident, the fraud people used deepfaked audios in order to scam a CEO of a huge company and steal his $243,000. As per the victim’s evidence, the caller used deepfake technology to replicate the German accent as well as melody of his employer and thus fooled him for taking that money. Despite the examples discussed above, there is still a need for materialisation of threats which may get posed by deepfakes. However, this technology is majorly used in creating viral videos or in creating adult content and not in any high tech cyberespionage which causes the security experts, computer scientists or politicians to worry. Does Deepfake technology pose the similar risk in 2021? One of the major reasons for Deepfake technology to not be in full-fledged level of scams is the essentiality of knowledge and the method with which they get generated. For creating a real looking or convincing deepfake, it requires the Artificial Intelligence algorithms and deep learning. Moreover, another factor which limits the use of deepfake is because scammers do not even need such technologies. There are several other low-tech methods which may help them in fooling other people. Then, why will they go for such a high-tech method for scamming? These reasons do not tell us that this technology will not cause any harm. It is possible that these barriers for creation of convincing frauds diminish with time. As they are getting popular among people, there are several apps also which makes it easier for scammers to create more convincing, cheaper and faster digital deepfakes. The best way for us to stay away from such cyberattacks or scams is knowledge. Every person who is well informed of the cases will be difficult to be fooled. How concerned should we be? As we have discussed, deepfake is not a huge threat to identity fraud. If a person tries to impersonate him as another individual as per the digital identity of that person, in this case digital manipulations cause some sort of threat to the methods of biometric authentication. But this is not applicable for a fraudster who is amateur. In order to create convincing deepfake images or videos, there must be significant technical expertise along with so much compute power, unlike some approaches like face morphing. So, it is evident that the scammers will need to put in a lot of effort and time in order to develop their capabilities so that they become capable of at least starting with creating convincing deepfake images, audios or videos. So, unfortunately, we cannot completely rely on this factor of technical barrier so as to prevent the scammers from using deepfake technology for duping other people. As for using any fraud technique or performing cybercrime, people could do this by packaging the code in order to allow others so as to allow others for leveraging Biometric authentication used to detect deepfakes However, we do not face such deepfakes frequently, we can still detect these deepfakes by using some important techniques. First of all, biometric analysis powered by AI can considerably help in determining if the video is forged or original. It uses techniques like motion, lip and texture analysis in order to verify the physical presence of the user. Secondly, we can do it by giving random instructions to the user so that we can know of their authentication. These instructions may include looking in the instructed directions, reading some phrases. These methods will help in predicting their authentication. The users who got to respond wrongly can be taken for further investigation. Also, the manipulation of deepfakes lowers down the video quality significantly. Lastly, the criminals should be fooled by making them think that we are capturing a deepfake video with the help of a phone, whereas we will use verification systems and fool them. Thus, you can know of the fraud.

Digital twins are in reality the virtual repetition of physical tools that the data scientists and the IT devices make use of for running the simulations prior to the actual tools being built and deployed. Today, these digital twins are becoming more and more advanced and changing the way technologies like IoT, AI can be optimised. How will you describe digital twin technology? The Digital twin technology is moving higher from the manufacturing viewpoint and moving towards the merging of the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, and data analytics. As more and more complex things start to become associated with the adaptability of producing information, having a digital friend raises the ability of the IT professionals and data scientists in optimising the deployments for better efficiency and creating imaginary scenarios. Describe the working of a digital twin technology A digital twin commences its life when it is built by specialists, more often by the experts in data science or in applied mathematics. These developers do proper research in the physics that define any physical thing or system being imitated and use the same for developing a mathematical model that boosts the real-world origin in the digital space life being built by specialists, often experts in data science or applied mathematics. The twin-magic: The twin is built so that it is able to receive the inputs from the sensors that collect the data from the real-world counterparts. This will empower the twin to boost the physical material in the real sense and time, in the procedure providing the insights of functionality and the potential difficulties. The twin can also be designed on the basis of the prototype of its physical aspects in this situation the twin is able to provide feedback as the product is refined. The twin can also serve like a prototype itself prior to any physical object or version being built. Some uses of Digital twin technology. There are two examples that state the use of digital twins: the car and a cargo vessel. Materials like an aircraft engine, train, offshore platform, and turbine can be easily designed and also tested digitally prior to being produced physically. These twins can also be used for maintenance work. For instance, technicians may use a digital twin for testing about a proposed affix to the physical twin. Digital-twin business operation can be found in numerous sectors:- Manufacturing is one of those sectors where advancements of digital twins are possibly the farthest ones, along with factories that are already making use of digital twins for boosting their performances, as per several types of research from many industries and companies. Automotive digital twins are built more likely because of the fact that many cars are already fitted with mensuration sensors, but the refining of the technology is becoming more vital because of the increasing number of autonomous vehicles hitting the roads. Healthcare is that sector that will produce the digital twins of the people we've been talking about. Band-aid sized sensors will send the health data back to the digital twin which will further be used to monitor and in examining the patient's well-being and conditions. Understanding the relation between Digital twins and the Internet of Things Clearly, we can say the IoT sensors today are a big part of what makes the digital twins more likely. And as IoT devices are refined, the digital twin cases will comprise smaller and lower difficult materials, which will give extra advantages to the industries. Digital twins are more generally used for predicting many outcomes that are based on variable information. This is the same as running the stimulation case which is often seen in science fiction and films, where any digital scene is proven with the help of the digital environment. Along with the extra software and data analytics, digital twins are able to optimise an IoT disposal for maximum productivity, as well as will help the designers in figuring out where things must be going or the way they should operate prior to being physically disposed. In A Nutshell The more that a digital twin can imitate the physical material, the more possible chances are there that the efficiencies and other advantages can be seen. For example, in the manufacturing sector, where there are more instrumental tools, the more precise digital twins might be boosted to see how the devices are performing over time, which will help in making estimates of future functionality and chances of failure.

The coronavirus disease or the COVID-19 has seen its preliminary documented affected person in December 2019 in Wuhan, China. Since that time, this virus has been scattering across the globe too fast way too quickly than anyone imagined, and as in step with WHO this disease was declared a pandemic by March 2020 resulting in the shutdown of the whole country. With this pandemic, there were innumerable difficulties to each and every person, and thus not even leaving the businesses. Several businesses face one of the most common difficulties which is brand safety. It is a very common fact that view-ability, readability, and ROI are some of the critical standards and are considered by any brand when buying any ad inventory. Another thought that crosses their mind when collaborating with publishers or advertisers, might be to use the top qualities of the content to get a great brand image. Every advertiser hopes to get the most relevant and pertinent users for their campaigns, but obviously not at the cost of having any unsafe content. And this is where brand safety will play its assigned role! Before understanding the importance, let us have a glimpse of what is brand safety? Introduction to brand safety! Brand safety measures are perfectly designed for protecting the online reputation of any brand and this will be done by restricting the brand from collaborating with any negative or inappropriate content. A famous quote says: “Brand safety is in the eye of the beholder—it all depends on what is or is not appropriate for the brand. For example, an R-rated action film might have different standards than a baby products company.” Now let us understand why we say that brand safety is a crucial aspect? Almost all the small and medium-size publishers are not having much knowledge about brand safety as a practice. And as a result, they definitely miss out on ad money monetisation prospects for them. Even the big and huge publishers such as news and magazine websites are trying hard to offer correct and pertinent information without making the use of any blacklisted or blocked keyword and losing out on any of these opportunities. Brand safety is a measure that will protect the publishers from any kind of risks also. Some of the potential risks included are illegally downloaded ads, fraudulent e-commerce ads, and invalid traffic. These might be exterminated with the publisher’s brand equity. Thus, there is a need to have a complete understanding of brand safety so that no publisher will avoid any kind of chance to leave money on their tables. What steps must be taken by the publishers? Have a check of your current position: Not just the use of blacklisted keywords, the advertisers should also consider their domain rights, a score of view-ability, fill rate, and historical bid price of the website you own. If in any of the cases, these numbers don’t match the standard of the advertiser, you can any moment be removed from the campaign of the advertiser. Thus, it is advisable for you to have a check on these numbers so that you avoid any penalty by the brand safety controllers. Do not try to touch the invalid traffic: When in contact with the non-human traffic, you might take down the brand safety score drastically. If by any chance any demand-side system catches a glimpse of any unusual traffic on your site they might mark your website as unsafe and even other buyers can’t see you then. Undeniably, this is true that the publishers can’t completely avoid the unusual traffic, in any if such case, they must be straightforward and the percentage of the invalid traffic should be shared in the policy of your website. Try to review the demand sources: It is suggested for you to choose the demand partners very carefully. Double ensure that they take and have adequate safety measures in the right place to avoid any wrongdoing like ad injection fraud, domain spoofing, and a lot more. Try to take some help from brand safety ventures: If you are constantly facing a declining fill rate and the reason is not known to you, then chances are the advertisers might have blacklisted or blocked you. There are innumerable reasons for this but don’t rule out the blacklisting at any cost. It is advisable to work directly with some of the prominent brand safety ventures or vendors. Along with the services for protections, they will also offer the perfect and required consultation to make a balance between genuine content and ad revenue. Have a clear understanding of brand safety: Brand safety is not only important for the advertisers but is also a vital concept for publishers of any size. Thus, it is well said that when you learn more about any problem, then you get closer to the solution. Marketers, as well as their businesses, had been somewhat ignorant about the occurrence of keyword blocking and brand safety. Any publisher will find it really embarrassing to get some screenshots from the advertisers related to their keyword usage on any disinformation websites and some extra hatred websites.

It’s 2021 and who doesn’t know about the existence of kickbacks in our advertising industry. A practice that is prevalent for ages in the marketing industry and still the agencies are happily performing it to earn more money. Advertisers are not very open to talking about the practices of kickbacks in the advertising industry, but still do perform it. It's kind of a legal form of bribe but it's still very controversial. What are kickbacks and what are their forms? Well, a kickback seems more of an illicit payment made in exchange for special benefits or some other form of shady service rendered. Cash, a reward, payment, or something of value may be used as a kickback. Kickbacks are a bribery activity that disrupts an employee's or public official's ability to make objective decisions. It's usually considered as a form of an illegitimate bribe. Why do kickbacks even exist? The answer lies in the highly ‘money-making’ intention of the industry where everyone wants to get filthy rich, by hook or crook. The issue of kickbacks is more of cultural practice in the industry where trust, ethics, and transparency are murdered. It’s all about hiding things better, the better you hide the better you can extract the money. Although there are several different types of kickbacks, they all involve collaboration between two parties. Example: For instance, a private or government company's business manager can accept a product invoice despite the fact that the bill is inaccurate. And the product seller may then pay the business manager a portion of the profit (or some other kind of reward). The detection and investigation of kickback schemes are one of the most complex forms of fraud. Let's look at among the most popular red flags of kickback. These might not always indicate that if something sinister is happening, but the more of these are present, the more likely a kickback scheme is taking on. Clients are overly pleased with vendors. Organisation compels workers to use a single vendor. There will be no open tender procedure (or lower bids are ignored) The seller has usually a history of legal or regulatory issues Organisations tend to use suppliers who deliver substandard goods or services. There's always a delay in delivery dates Mostly during the buying process, there is a lack of sufficient monitoring. Rates for products or services are higher than usual rates So, Do clients also take profit from kickbacks? To say, YES, to some extent, they can. There really is no doubt that a publisher would be willing to offer a rebate to high-spending customers. Rebates are provided by advertisers to guarantee that a larger portion of the inventory is purchased at a better price rather than being marketed at different prices through an ad exchange. However, a kickback can also help a client get a better inventory rate if it's in the company's or publisher's best interests to provide a lower value at the time to assure that the media purchase happens. This may be affected by how close an organisation is to achieve a kickback agreement and also how important the kickback is towards the business overall. How can the clients be more cautious dealing with kickbacks? To deal with kickbacks and lack of transparency, the client must ask certain questions to self and based on those should take further actions. Some of the basic and necessary questions that he or she should take into considerations are:- Is it possible to meet my target audience via other digital platforms? If that's the case, which platform is the most cost-effective? Can I recognise the difference between the expected and real rate that the publisher and my agency are supplying? Why aren't my inventory rates or estimates changing from reporting period to reporting period or campaign to campaign? (a clear sign that the department is accepting bribes) Are commercial marketplace agreements helping me achieve my promotional objectives? Who is creating the investment decisions, and why are they being made? Are there any extra data or custom innovations included in the package? If so, how can these contribute to my campaign's goals? Why is there so much delay in the supply? Should I do some more research about the agency? Why is there a shortage of communication? Conclusion Kickbacks in the media industry may come in the form of rebates or false charging for products that do not exist. Clients spend a value in the form of higher prices or a poorer quality of service than they would usually expect for their money. Agency fees are shrinking, and a difficult-to-understand digital marketplace is delivering the encouragement and shield for such behaviour. And as already said, it’s still one of the most complex forms of white-collar crimes that can be detected. Author : Auhsini Das About Her : With a Data Science degree from IIT Madras, Aushini enrich audience with her high quality tech articles. Having +5 years of experience in content writing, She work passionately to create copy that converts, with a focus on maintaining your authentic brand voice.

Undeniably, technology today is stepping the ladders of success at the fastest pace and doesn’t seem to slow down! We today are able to do all the things that are the mother of all what-ifs in the past. Mobile phones are the most fascinating sources of entertainment. No person can claim to get bored when thawing phones in their hands. You can do whatever you wish like listening to music, contact a long-distance person, manage work, gaming, and whatnot. Internet facilities act just like the cherry on the cake for any mobile device, you can download your favourite songs and videos and share them among friends and family. In any situation like standing in a queue, long journey, waiting for someone, or getting bored, your phone will come to your rescue and offer you superb entertainment. The pattern of mobile devices in India The vast Indian market of manufacturing of handsets comprises smartphones and feature phones are just skyrocketing. As per the stats of the India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF) knowledge centre , India is widely prominent to be the second-largest market for mobile manufacturing followed by China. India is believed to overtake the current position of China in the forthcoming years by 5 times if it moves with this pace and can be known as the largest market as compare to China, where growth has started to decelerate. How do I see which app gets what information? As soon as you install an app, it is much common that they ask for certain permissions. Even if we look at the past, several apps seek permission for about everything that they generally require upfront, but in the latest trending IOS and Android the things are very much segregated so they genuinely ask for access. If you see an iPhone, it is a very simple procedure to check what variations of data you have given permission for and from which apps, and if you wish you can also revise your decision with a click. In any non-Apple phone or Android phone, there is a somewhat streamline the setting of privacy in Android 10 and you can also see in some Android 6 version you see the settings in the app permissions options. Why are the apps demanding access to my camera? You must have seen several apps ask for your camera access, it is the most common permission asked by apps. You must have wondered why camera setting? Are they going to put surveillance on me without my knowledge? The answer probably is a no! This is actually a dangerous practice for every app and would not add a lot of value. But the question arises why camera access? Generally, there are some apps that give you access to upload your pictures like Instagram, Facebook, or scanning of QR codes. Until and unless the app is image-focused, there is no such need for any other app to ask for permissions. Why some apps are tar-getting on physical movements? Our phones are almost time connected with the internet and have an added feature of built-in GPS, which makes it easy to understand your movements. Facebook and Instagram have often tied your posts with some places, some music and video streaming apps also have interest in knowing your movements to give you suggestions. Yes, it has its advantages, but sometimes the odds are against us too as this information is something people are much protective about. Both the iPhone and Androids have this feature that calls for the “only while in use” feature with location access. Both of these systems also offer you an option of completely turning your location on or off as per your wish and will also remind you on a daily basis if any app is trying to track you from its backend. What are the safety measures to secure yourself? Completely focus on the app store Generally, your mobile devices give you permission for any type of app installation without their app store, but you should not accept the same. The app store of your phone offers reliable protection against any threat. The apps are perfectly reviewing the malware and along with this, your phone is also scanning any threat that might have left by the app store to ensure smooth functioning of your device. Any outside source, like a file that you download from some website, does not assure any kind of protection. See what your apps are accessing Whenever you install an app, they ask for several common permissions like GPS, camera, photos, and some more. But there are some apps that also require some other things like contacts, profiles, and even more. It is nearly impossible to use the apps without giving them access, but you should be aware that you should not agree to every condition. You might not know that there are some apps that also make money by selling your information to the advertisers and this is why you receive random calls too. You might have wondered why your calculator or flashlight app asks for your location or contacts. Use of Anti-virus and Anti-malware features Of course, nobody would let their computers work without any antivirus, then why would you let your phones stay unprotected? Until the moment you are using the internet, it is under constant threats. There are many anti-virus and anti-malware available for apps that ensure that you are not sharing any information that is not required or blocking the apps that affect your privacy. In a nutshell, People today are so much dependent on their mobiles as they offer startling benefits to them majorly connecting to people all across the globe in their daily life. But we don’t realise that it affects our personal information with any downloads we make or any internet facility we use. Privacy is anyways never secured, but many measures can be taken to protect your phone and your personal data which is important for the great functioning of the phone in the big picture! Author : Auhsini Das About Her : With a Data Science degree from IIT Madras, Aushini enrich audience with her high quality tech articles. Having +5 years of experience in content writing, She work passionately to create copy that converts, with a focus on maintaining your authentic brand voice.

So, you have just started a business and want to expand it. How do you do it? Well, obviously by advertising. But where do you advertise? The newspaper? The magazine? These options are isolated and most definitely don’t reach enough people. The main reason would be digitisation. So posters, newspapers, and tabloid magazines are just not enough anymore. This is where digital marketing comes in. Digital marketing needs understanding to make an online business campaign successful. What is programmatic advertising? Programmatic advertising is the technology the enables you to place ads in ad spaces of publishers. Now there is a process to how this works. First, let us understand the different components of programmatic advertising. SSP – stands for the supply-side platform. It is a kind of software that looks after the supply side of the publisher side. This software takes information from the publisher, such as – the minimum range for which a publisher offers their ad space, the content, and general information about the publisher. SSP mainly finds advertisements suitable for the publishers’ content and uses the ad space effectively. DSP – stands for the demand-side platform. This software takes promoters information – the maximum bidding price, the target audience, and the advertisement content. DSP mainly finds ad spaces based on user interest and shows those ads to the consumers. This enables targeting a specific audience and also ensures the ad gets good impressions. Ad space/ Inventory space– Ad space or Inventory space is any space you see in a website or platform where an advert is displayed. These ads are generally a result of programmatic advertising. Ad exchange – Ad exchange is a technology that acts as a mediator for SSP and DSP. Since it is technology, there is complete transparency for the advertiser as they can directly buy inventory space from suppliers. However, they are slightly complicated and may be best used by veteran businesses with a lot to invest in. Ad network – Ad network also is a mediator connecting SSP and DSP. However, an Ad network is a company. These Ad networks buy inventory space from publishers in bulk and sell to the advertisers. This means that there is a lack of transparency. The supplier’s direct price is not known, and thus the price listed by the Ad network could fluctuate. RTB – stands for real-time bidding. This is a complex process that happens in a fraction of seconds. When you click on a website, the SSP gathers your relevant information through cookies and sends them to the DSP. The DSP then places a bid for that ad space in the Ad exchange or Ad network. Now automatically, the highest bid is chosen. All this happens between the time you click on a website till the website loads. As soon as you load the website, you see the advert on the website. This process is real-time bidding. Tracking – Tracking is how the ad exchange or ad network tracks where consumers are coming from website adverts, or links in search results, through emails, or through social media. It tracks your campaign and thus increases impressions and reach. How does programmatic advertising work? So, as an advertiser, you use an ad exchange or ad network to pay for your campaign to get advertised on different websites, social media, web pages, and emails. DSP and SSP do proper audience targeting. Thus it is ensured that your advertisements reach audiences who have shown interest in campaigns and topics similar to yours. Real-time bidding makes the process very fast and quick. Further, through tracking, you can track the platform through which you get maximum impressions and reach. This makes the entire process of marketing a campaign online much faster, more comfortable, and efficient. Author : Auhsini Das About Her : With a Data Science degree from IIT Madras, Aushini enrich audience with her high quality tech articles. Having +5 years of experience in content writing, She work passionately to create copy that converts, with a focus on maintaining your authentic brand voice.

With every online transaction, a person becomes more vulnerable to become a target for online fraud in this growing technology era. When we talk about any type of fraud in mobile marketing, one should have a full set of knowledge about susceptibility every fraud process holds within, its functionality, the resulting consequences, and how to detect such fraud. Before discussing the susceptibility and the consequences of frauds, let us first discuss the most common type of frauds trending today, click hijacking. Let us first mention what is click hijacking, how it is pacing ways and ruling the internet. What is Click Hijacking? Click hijacking is a very common fraud of mobile click and installs that will send deceptive click reports a few moments after the actual click pops up. Generally, it is activated by malware that is easily hidden in apps that are completely legalised apps or those that are downloaded via third-party app stores. How does Click Hijacking work? When any single click is detected, the malware will send you a wrong click report copied from an engaging network, productively hijacking the click and making any leading to installs. To find click hijacking, utilise the raw data reports to recognise sources sending clicks following after the formerly recorded click from a competing network, in case you have multi-click attribution enabled. When any user clicks on the app store icon for the installation no matter how they went there, it catches the eye of the fraudster. The fraudster will check if they can get access to a campaign that promotes the app being installed and hijacks its clicks, leading to accreditation in install. Vulnerabilities are taken for granted in click hijacking in comparison to click spamming and is coming from the most crucial- the app store. Any app when submitted to the app store should go through stages of reviews and approvals. Until now, there are ample fraudsters that are easily able to fool people, but in the actual world there can be more testing processes. The apps that include any kind of ineffective and dangerous software could have been detected and banned before getting the interest of any fraudster or any user. RUBE GOLDBERG EFFECT OF CLICK HIJACKING We have often seen the cases of ample elements of the advertiser’s being pretentious. Initially. Click hijacking causes harm to the app developer deliberately and clearly which is similar to click spamming, the organic installs are here misunderstood as paid installs. This clearly implies that the advertiser has to pay for something he already is the owner of. But, that’s not all. There’s more to add here! The apps marketing KPIs are fully clogged through this and the real performance of the fraudster is not presented here, rather the paper performance is shown which seems to look good but is actually a loss to another partner. Confusion among advertisers: The advertisers are in utter confusion afterward. The deceitful person here will get an advantage while the non-deceitful person will suffer loss since all these installs are hijacked. The well-known facts state that the deceitful campaign will automatically fail if the non- deceitful campaign is not performing well. This is because both of them are interrelated and even then the hijackers are not revealed. The one who initiates or hosts the click hijacking ultimately wins. Hidden Ad placement: Ample installs are brought about for the ad placements hidden in it, as the hijackers most often only choose their malevolent code in some share/ratio of all impressions ranging from like 1/10 or 1/15, for example. It can still be stated by legalised bidders as the main ad placement for user addition, which implies that it would get voluminous CPM bids for its inventory. How is click hijacking detected? CR appears to be rising in click hijacking because the users are unaware but CTIT will be between 0-20 seconds because the hijacker is assigned the right click prior to the install starts. Check if the assigned platform provides some form of user journey navigating you can then see the deceitful company will continuously pop up between installs. Example 1: Recall the popular case of spiteful code SDK, the Chinese company Mintegral which deliberately disguised itself that offers help to several app developers and advertisers. It aimed to monetise their apps productively along with ads. It was later discovered that the company was working to steal the revenue from ample ad networks. Mintegral made a clever move by not hijacking every link, rather just picking randomly one out of ten clicks. They made it harder for people to understand their fraudulent activities and were making their easy way to move out. Not just one, but there are several other cases that will tell you about the smart play of various companies and their codes that led to big frauds and causing threats to the people. How can we avoid click hijacking? Click Hijacking is much common today and the prevention of such crime is really becoming difficult these days. It’s not like other crimes like SQL injection or CSRF because this is based on frames, a very popular functionality used today. But there is a cloud of hope every time we face some glitch, below mentioned are some ways you should practice to avoid or prevent click hijacking and other crimes as well. Every mobile marketer should always confirm that their web applications are safe and protected from any kind of threat so that they do not grant access to third-parties to interfere with them. Solution 1: Don’t forget to pick an intelligent, time effective, properly directed WAF that will act as your application’s battlement controlling any defective requests from giving it allowance through any minor flaw while straight away mending susceptibilities till the developer corrects them. It repetitively scans for threats, giving access to custom terms, and ensures zero or fallacious positives. Solution 2: Another preventive measure for click hijacking attacks could be to include X-Frame-Options HTTP headers that promise that your web application or its counterparts are not being entangled in frames, iFrames, or on pages or domains. In a nutshell, The internet and technology today are growing phenomenal and revolving around not just our lives but in those of cyber-criminals as well. They are also today grasping the release of technology to discover some new and smart ways to generate hacks, spiteful attacks, contraventions, and many more. There are numerous people who are roaming in search of doing enormous frauds causing you big fat loss. But taking the right kind of prevention and having certain knowledge will definitely lead you towards a safer and better online experience. As per several surveys, today internet frauds are simultaneously touching the sky and don’t seem to be slowing down. They have been ruling over the internet with a dominant share today in the market. Several cases in the past have been reported, present cases are being reported and even in the forthcoming future are being forecasted to rise with time. Lives today are wholly dependent on technology and the only way to act smart is to get certain specific knowledge of several terms and frauds. Author : Auhsini Das About Her : With a Data Science degree from IIT Madras, Aushini enrich audience with her high quality tech articles. Having +5 years of experience in content writing, She work passionately to create copy that converts, with a focus on maintaining your authentic brand voice.

Marketers/advertisers are bundled with data today. They are collecting data behind every touchpoint the consumer makes, right from click data, install data, engagement data, etc. In today’s world, there are 2 major activities marketers are involved in: Using click and install data, marketers keep investigating different forms of campaigns to drive bigger volumes down the digital funnel Using engagement data, marketers study channels of engagement and message throughout the lifecycle of a digital consumer to enable a higher LTV However, this isn’t enough to study whether the incoming data is attributed correctly or not. Vanity matrices today are merely numbers on a digital dashboard, but the correctness is immensely suspected throughout. Finding attribution manipulation can be problematic and estimating an analogical behaviour of the traffic to a constant is merely impossible. For the same, because of the problem and the largeness of the data, it requires machine led understanding of the data over time. Usage of filters, boundary conditions, threshold, etc gives a good descriptive statistical understanding of the data in hand and can estimate rule-based anomaly finding. However, this misses on predictive and prescription data science. AI In Advertising Fraud In order to build a true machine learning model, one must look at the data very closely and build a homogeneous learning model that only injects consumer journey behaviour as a learning variable. Examples of Common Ad Fraud Schemes in which ML helps : Some sub-publisher based mobile application’s track consumer’s keyword search in google play store or iOS store, and if a consumer searches for a particular advertiser that is active and running performance led campaigns, a click is generated. These clicks hijack traffic from other networks and steal the organic traffic as well. A CTIT learning might not be enough to highlight such an anomaly, as these hijacks generally have a CTIT of more than 20 seconds. Some sub-publisher based mobile application’s track customer’s’ APK changes. In case, a customer installs a particular android or apple app package, a click is generated to hijack this form of traffic. Generally, these lie in the CTIT anomaly limit of 20 seconds, but a back timed click is sometimes even injected to claim the attribution. Incase of installs and engagement based KPI for performance campaigns, APK drops are a common thing for acquiring new customers from tier 2, tier 3 and rural India. The sub-publisher-based mobile application works as adware and takes the rights of installing new-APK on the mobile device. These kinds of installs are generally greyed at half a cent at the value to many aware marketers. Marketers opt for it for reaching the quick 1 million mark, or high listing on google play or apple store. However, these installs are generally not brand-safe and might allow data theft. Finding attribution manipulation is not easy. The objective behind the mere click manipulation is to hijack the last-click attribution model for monetary gains. Anyone with mere contacts of these adware/malware enabled apps can help one in growing the business in no time which in return fuels corruption, fake news, tax evasion and cross-border cyber warfare. Detection for these kinds of traffic sources is a must, as it incentivises the above, but also affects digital consumers and the country in the long run. As published in : Financial Express

The world of online advertising is an alluring one to fraudsters. Indeed, the impersonal nature of the transactions, a complex and often-opaque supply chain, and reliance on easily-fiddled metrics make ad fraud more common and also a big challenge among several marketers, publishers, and ad-tech enterprises alike today. One of the most difficult challenges around digital mobile fraud is that no one really knows exactly how big a problem it is, with estimates ranging from high…to higher…to stratospheric. According to an Ad Fraud India survey by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), though 22 percent of mobile ad spends falls victim to ad fraud, exploring new technologies to check it is not in the eyes of many marketer's agenda. In this article, we shall come to know about Why does mobile ad fraud occur Types of mobile ad fraud How to fight mobile ad fraud Final Words Why does mobile ad fraud happen? It looks like a target opportunity to make money easily and hastily through illegal means. There are 2 key factors driving the frauds rising today: The mobile content is much slower production where both audience and advertisers demands are increasing on a daily basis, which creates an opportunity for fraudsters to utilise. There is a lack of industrial action in assessing frauds that implies a criminal is less likely to be caught and can still act with impunity. Mobile ad fraud requires wholesale industry co-ordination. All the people committed to fraud are aware of the flaws in the production and execution system, which is why they have complete information about using the glitched areas. What are the types of Mobile Ad Frauds? Many mobile advertisers have seen large fraud operations up to approximately 80 percent of marketing budgets for soft KPI driven campaigns. Here is a list of common frauds known today. 1. IVT: Short for invalid traffic, IVT is any traffic not coming from real users. We can see that the principality of mobile advertising is followed by IVT which is designed to look like human activity. Within the general niche of IVT, there are two general categories: GIVT (general IVT) and SIVT (sophisticated IVT). SIVT is designed to be human-like, often for criminal purposes. 2. Click Injection: Also sometimes called click sniping, click injection is particularly prevalent in campaigns measured through last-click attribution. Many mobile measurement experts at several platforms claim to be the common app for frauds. 3. Click Replacement: In last click attribution, the user click/search is open watched upon by malware and adware, once the user decides to download a particular mobile application, a click is pushed to replace existing click of organic/other publisher users. 4. Click Spamming: With click spamming, fraudsters send a whole bunch of fake reports in the hopes that one of them is accepted as legitimate. Whenever you clock on a denial-of-service attack, the target of click spamming is to simply welcome the anti-fraud systems on the right side. Many people also know it as click flooding, and it took the growth for about 16 percent of all app installed fraud in between 2017 and 2018. 5. Ad Stacking: In this type of fraud scheme, multiple ads are displayed all at once, one on top of the other. This allows an unscrupulous publisher or another involved partner to say that they technically served an ad and should receive payment for serving the said ad, even though the ad was never technically visible. This type of fraud can be a real big problem for many brand awareness campaigns. 6. App Spoofing: App spoofing is also known as domain spoofing in the technical world, a fraudster will send a request that he is the ultimate owner and publisher allowing them to unlawfully get demand from advertisers. 7. Background Ad Activity: This describes scenarios in which ads are served completely out of view of legitimate end-users. An advertisement is playing in the background but none of the people is aware of it. This is how the fraudster can still be able to charge from you even when none of the people has seen the ad. How to fight mobile ad fraud? Mobile ad fraud today is responsible for flushing down billions of dollars in marketing budgets all across the globe. When we discuss the fraud’s true effect, we must understand all parts to properly evaluate the threats of the online industry’s biggest danger. There are some fraud tactics like malicious bots or device farms that directly have an effect on marketing camps by using advertising resources on unreal users who give zero value. But there are some indirect consequences that give a potentially bigger threat as long-term aftermath affect which impacts user devices and privacy leading to reputation or financial loss. Responsible marketers must pay visits and find time to get knowledge of fraud tactics and mindset to properly approach the issue. Marketing Fraud operations are often seen as a viable business today and their planning and execution eventually helps them get a smarter understanding of how to cope with the solution. Final Words Understanding the common fraud tactics, technological applications, and industry susceptibilities that allow fraud to blossom can help turn the situation on internal and external initiatives. They will help in decreasing the cases that are touching the sky now. Author: Auhsini Das About Her: With a Data Science degree from IIT Madras, Aushini enrich audience with her high quality tech articles. Having +5 years of experience in content writing, She work passionately to create copy that converts, with a focus on maintaining your authentic brand voice.

Performance marketing has always been data driven, with vanity matrices guiding the performance KPI. It's been an exciting role for 21st century marketers to identify, target and retarget customers based on their actions and behaviour. Often this actions and behaviour of consumers is understood by data attribution. Each action of consumer creates a data footprint for him/er in the data attribution. This attribution is often used by marketers to define their KPI in performance campaigns. Last click attribution and multi click attribution has been current models of adoption for marketers define paying criteria for traffic providers. You would often find marketers running KPI's ranging from CPM to CPT, which is equivalent of feeding your entire sales funnel with some form of traffic. Why are these models proving to be insufficient to fight the menace of advertising fraud? Data attribution is often hijacked. How? Fake mobile apps or a publisher(app or web-based) working with 2 or more ad-houses or networks. Example : On my android device, suppose I have a Youtube app and a local news application, Now, if I saw an advertisement on youtube, and showed interest in the service being provided by the advertiser. The local news application, acting as a user tracking app, would inject a last click if I start using the service provided by the advertiser, claiming the traffic. In turn, making commission. While, the conversion really happened on Youtube. This form of ad fraud often called click injection is rampant among B2C advertisers, and often impacts minimum 20% spends on ad-networks. Why it is a problem? Hijacking user conversions for high value payouts in form of CPT campaign, has always been a playground of big time fraudsters. A network of these form of mobile apps are deployed intentionally. Who is hijacking and what is the source of hijacking is a mystery question for advertisers globally. How can Com Olho help? Com Olho neither uses rule based detection nor uses any form of blacklist to identify fraudulent traffic. We use sophisticated machine learning algorithms to segregate traffic based on degree of programmatic manipulation, which allows us to decide if a particular traffic provider has been hijacking traffic from other inventories i.e social networks. Want to know more? Request Demo Today.

After our first year as Com Olho, we reflect on where we came from and where we're headed! The last 365 days have been filled with passion, excitement, hard work and a lot of fun. As we turn 1, we are looking back and celebrating our milestones and memories that happened along the way. On our very first day of the company, our first task was to just setup the chair and table. We din't have a website, a product or any kind of sales collateral. But we managed it all. "Com Olho" is a Portuguese word meaning "With Eyes". We found the name unique, high on brand-ability and most importantly it wasn't taken. We started up with a very simple vision, take a problem statement and solve it using advance technology, and today we have 3000 lines of committed code, 6 product update version releases and double digit sales collaterals. Hopefully thats enough reasons to take advantage of our birthday promotion.