Online swindlers focus on advertisers

Swindlers have stepped up their effort to fleece millions of dollars from online advertisers who use lucrative marketing networks run by Google and Yahoo, a report says.

Information collected from 1300 online marketers by US-based Click Forensics shows sales referrals generated by clicks on the brief advertising links popularised by the two companies are a sham 14.1 per cent of the time. That's up from 13.7 per cent three months ago.