The method, device and computer-readable storage medium of monitoring changes of web advertisements described in the present disclosure belong to a technical field of the Internet. The method of monitoring changes of web advertisements comprises loading a monitored page, storing the monitored page in a form of pictures, wherein the monitored page comprises an advertisement object; comparing the stored picture with a pre-stored picture of the monitored page and determining whether the advertisement on the monitored page is changed.

A method of protecting a device from unauthorized advertisements includes intercepting data from the Internet that is to be displayed by a browser and determining if the data includes an advertisement. If the data includes an advertisement, the advertisement is analyzed to determine if the advertisement is an unauthorized advertisement and if the advertisement is an unauthorized advertisement, a warning message is displayed.

Methods, systems and device for verifying a transaction in a loyalty or advertising system are described. One such method includes: receiving, at least one processor, transaction data associated with a transaction between a customer and a merchant; determining, at the at least one processor, from the transaction data whether the customer and the merchant are associated with the loyalty or advertising system; and upon determining from the transaction data whether the transaction corresponds to a reward or advertisement, triggering the redemption of the reward or advertisement.

A system for processing information requests associated with mobile devices comprises an evaluation module configured to determine at least one performance measure for each of a plurality of information documents using at least data in one or both of a requests database and events database. The at least one performance measure includes at least one of an impression-based performance measure, a click/call-based performance measure, and an off-line site-visit-based performance measure. The system further comprises an information server configured to select a first information document for transmitting to a first mobile device to fulfill a first request. The information server includes a volume control unit configured to derive an off-line site visit projection in response to the first document being selected based at least in part on an off-line site-visit-based performance measure and having been impressed on the first mobile device, and to adjust a budget associated with the first document using the off-line site visit projection.

A computerized method for transactional approval stores, at a first computer system, first user identification data associated with a user. The first user identification data is insufficient to confirm an identity of the user. The computerized method stores, at the first computer system, first account identification data associated with the first user identification data. The computerized method receives, at the first computer system, second account identification data associated with a transaction, the second account identification data received from a second computer system. The computerized method also receives, at the first computer system, electronically obtained identification data associated with the transaction. Finally, the computerized method approves, by the first computer system, the transaction when the electronically obtained identification data associated with the transaction corresponds to the first user identification data, and the second account identification data corresponds to the first account identification data.

Methods and systems for serving advertisement objects on an advertising platform are disclosed. The advertising platform detects invalid activity related to advertisement objects served in response to a request, and identifies a source associated with the invalid activity. In response to detection of the invalid activity, at least one decoy advertisement object is served in response to further requests originating from the identified source. The decoy advertisement object is an advertisement object that is processed by the advertising platform differently from regular advertisement objects that are served by the advertising platform in response to requests from other sources.

Methods and systems for detecting invalid activity related to served advertisement objects are disclosed. An advertising platform performs invalid activity detection using a first detection threshold. User-initiated indicators of possible invalid activity on the advertising platform are received. The user-initiated indicators originate from multiple user accounts associated with the advertising platform. In response to the received user-initiated indicators of possible invalid activity, invalid activity detection is performed using a second detection threshold that is more sensitive than the first detection threshold.

A computer implemented method of determining an association between disparate first and second data items wherein the second data item is at least partly derived from the first data item, the method comprising: evaluating a cryptographic hash to each result of each of a plurality of disparate feature extraction methods, each feature extraction method being applied to each of the first and second data items to generate a set of hashes for each data item; responsive to a non-empty set of hashes in the intersect of the sets of hashes for each data item, identifying an association between the first and second data items.

A method of using browsing activity to identify fraudulent online or virtual applications includes receiving a virtual application over one or more radio frequency links, determining an applicant name on the virtual application, determining an IP address of a source computer from which the virtual application originated, determining an online browsing or search history associated with the IP address, determining whether the online browsing or search history indicates recent Internet searches for the applicant name, and, in response to determining that the online browsing or search history does indicate recent Internet searches for the applicant name, flagging the virtual application as fraudulent and generating an electronic alert indicating that the virtual application is fraudulent to facilitate identifying fraudulent virtual applications for goods or services.

A method includes acquiring first aggregate event data for a first sub-publisher. The first aggregate event data indicates aggregate user activity across a plurality of applications associated with the first sub-publisher. The method further includes acquiring second aggregate event data for a plurality of additional sub-publishers. The method further includes determining a plurality of anomaly metric values for the first sub-publisher based on the first aggregate event data and the second aggregate event data. The method further includes determining an anomaly function value for the first sub-publisher based on the anomaly metric values for the first sub-publisher. The anomaly function value indicates a likelihood that the first sub-publisher is associated with fraudulent user activity. The method further includes determining whether the user activity across the plurality of applications associated with the first sub-publisher is fraudulent based on the anomaly function value and notifying a customer device of fraudulent activity.