A local woman reported to the Judiciary Police (PJ) last week that she was cheated out of 500 yuan in an online scam on Wednesday, PJ spokesman Chan Wun Man said at a press briefing on Friday.
According to Chan, the victim told the police that she received a text message on her smartphone saying that she could earn money by just clicking “likes”.
She followed the message’s instructions and downloaded an app called “Chengfeng” (成豐), which Chan described as a “click farm” platform (刷單平台). After signing up as a member, she was only required to click “likes” online and was promised to be paid 5.88 yuan in “commission” for every three “likes”.
Afterwards, the platform’s purported “customer service” told her that she must “pass a test” – to go online shopping on Taobao (淘寶). However, she was not required to actually purchase the items but just to transfer the purchase amount to a designated account via Alipay. Then she would get back the money she spent on the purchase as well as a commission, Chan said.
According to Chan, the victim transferred 500 yuan into the account through Alipay on the same day. The “customer service” later told her to transfer five additional amounts so that she could get back the 500 yuan and the purported commission. The victim refused and asked for refund but to no avail, so she reported the case to the police.
According to Wikipedia, a click farm is a form of click fraud where a large group of low-paid workers are hired to click on paid advertising links for the click fraudster (click farm master or click farmer). The workers click the links, surf the target website for a period of time, and possibly sign up for newsletters prior to clicking another link. For many of these workers, clicking on enough ads per day may increase their revenue substantially and may also be an alternative to other types of work. It is extremely difficult for an automated filter to detect this simulated traffic as fake because the visitor behaviour appears exactly the same as that of an actual legitimate visitor.
For instance, according to media reports, click farms sell fake likes to influencers.
