In fact, the facts around whether click fraud is illegal are a little murky.Yes, there have been arrests and court cases around the defrauding of online advertisers.

And, yes the PPC platforms are doing their best to close those loopholes that continue to allow PPC fraud to proliferate.

Or it might be an automated traffic source clicking on your paid links.Competitor click fraud is probably one of the best examples of click fraud and might be one example of where you might be considering pressing charges.Ad fraud tends to be run by more sophisticated operations, running click fraud processes on a wholesale scale.

This includes everything from organised fraud down to genuine accidents such as a slip of the finger.The legal sideAs mentioned, the laws around the legality of click fraud (or otherwise) are a little murky.

Generally, although most countries don’t have specific laws against click fraud, they do tend to have laws that cover cybersecurity or ‘information technology’.In conjunction with existing fraud laws, most court cases against click fraud focus on aspects such as wire fraud, data theft, deception and money laundering.China, for example, has the Anti-Unfair Competition Law which is supposed to tackle issues such as stealing trade secrets and bribery.

So surely click fraud and ad fraud will have some laws against it here?In fact, the European Union does have some of the strictest anti-fraud laws in the world.