AVG scanner blasts internet with fake traffic

AVG rolled Linkscanner into its anti-virus engine, which has about 70 million active users worldwide. The company estimates that 20 million machines have upgraded to the tool's new incarnation, AVG version 8, and this has already cooked up enough ghost clicks to skew traffic not only on The Reg but any number of other sites as well.

Webmasters deal with robot traffic and other rogue visits all the time. But this is a little different. In an effort to fool even the sneakiest malware exploits, Linkscanner does its best to imitate real user clicks - which means most webmasters are completely unaware of the problem.