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 AdSense Extortion in Germany

M. Adams of nimzoservices.com has been slowly increasing the AdSense revenue for some German web sites over the last few months. Last week he sent e-mails to the operators demanding money for his "service" in the future. If they choose not to comply he would increase the clicks so that Google would take notice and possibly cancel the website owner's AdSense account.

Loose translation of the e-mail:

Dear Mr. XY,

you probably have noticed an increase in your AdSense revenue during October. This is a direct result of us including your website in our test program.

For details see www.nimzoservices.com.

As you can learn from your latest payments from Google, our concept works very well. We have about 1000 German employees to test web sites...

With their help we are able to increase the number of web site visitors and income from advertising.

We are also able to "destroy" AdSense accounts by increasing the click rate so that Google will notice it and delete the account.

As you surely can understand, we want to participate in the revenue increase. So far we have no contractual relations. There are two options for you:

You reject our offer and refuse to pay us money. In this case we will stop our activities. However, you risk loosing your latest revenue and your AdSense account.

You accept our offer and pay us 50% of the increased revenue. We then will continue to slowly increase the revenue.

I believe it is an easy decision for you. The second alternative is a win-win situation for both of us.

Please let us know your decision immediately.

Regards

M. Adams
(www.nimzoservices.com)

 

The case was discussed in more detail in the abacus forum. Google has been notified by several webmasters and they have already tracked down a Mr. Lutzenberger as the real person behind the scam.

  • December 3, 2005: Geschäftsmodell AdSense-Missbrauch, Heise:
    "Wie verschiedene Teilnehmer des Werbeprogramms Google AdSense berichten (1, 2), manipuliert ein angeblicher Michael Adams der in Panama ansässigen Firma Nimzoservices.com die Zugriffe auf AdSense-Werbeeinträge."

 

 

 

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