I was surprised to read a comment promoting click fraud on AlexKing’s blog. I wanted to comment on how misinformed the person is and have written an open response to him and anyone else thinking of the doing the same.

Robin Hood Said: “In addition to the occasional donation, I make it a habit to click all the google adwords on the sites I like, especially if the ads are from major brands. A Firefox plug in (call it Robin Hood) in to do this for me and to estimate how much money.”

Robin Hood, I hope you realize that MOST advertisers on the Google Network are NOT Fortune 1000, and many of them are betting 50% of their paycheck to see if they can get an online business going so they can quit their day job. Thanks to you, you are stealing money from hard working individuals trying to become free of the very Fortune 1000 companies you seem to be targeting.

And even if you only click on Fortune 1000 ads, we can thank you for higher prices. Don”t you think that the Fortune 1000 companies will simply raise prices to cover increased costs? Every single cost, plus profit is included in the price of an item. You raise the costs, the price must rise. You are actually hurting the average consumer by making them pay higher prices for goods. The corporations are going to get their profits no matter what, and pass ALL the costs, including advertising, onto the buyers. That’s how it works, like it or not.

Also, by repeatedly clicking on ads on websites, you are flagging the website who you are trying to support for fraud and could get their Google AdSense account banned where they can’t make any more money. Google tracks fraud and will ban a website from their network if there is too much fraud coming from it, because they will assume that the owner of the website is involved, since they are the ones getting the checks.

You think you are helping people by doing click fraud, but you are hurting the very bloggers and websites you are claiming to help, and are hurting individuals and small companies instead of the Fortune 1000.