Victim of Botnet

If you are revisiting this site, you might be wondering why the format looks funny as there are empty spaces on the right column. If you had noticed, those used to be "Ads by Google" and it is just some way to monetise my blog. However, i just received notice from Google Adsense that my account has been disabled!!

So sad.. I realised that I could have been a victim of a botnet software. Botnet is a jargon term for a collection of software robots, or bots, which run autonomously and automatically. Apparently, there is some "doubleclick.net" bot that could have been remotely clicking on my google ads without my notice. So suddenly I have a huge surge in advertising clicks and Google Adsense singled my blog out.

I just purchased a new laptop on Monday and seems like the preinstalled softwares or changes made by the supplier could be the source, because that was the period when all these things started.

Interesting to note is I used reputable anti-virus softwares like AVG and Adware but they doesn't seem to be able to identify any issues. These bots are not considered malicious. The bot I found was scanned out by Spybot1.5, so you might consider downloading that. Frankly, I'm not even sure if that is the bot causing these problems as there could some others that are yet to be scanned out. I'm not sure, any other good softwares (hopefully freeware) to suggest?

Sigh.. I have just appealed to Adsense and hopefully, they would enable my account again.