Why I am canceling Google AdSense

Last Thursday, I received an email from 'Google Adsense' saying:

It has come to our attention that invalid clicks or impressions have been generated on the Google ads on your site(s) through users of third-party programs paid or provided with other incentives to visit your site. Such programs may include, but are not limited to auto-surf, pay-to-surf, pay-to-read, or pay-to-click sites.

I responded:

I do not know of any invalid clicks that have been generated on Google ads for my site. Can you provide me additional information, such as the IP addresses this is occuring from, the time, and any suggestions about how I can prevent this?

Today, I received an email from Google stating:

As you know, Google treats instances of invalid click and impression activity very seriously. As a reminder, we cannot disclose any details about how our monitoring technology works or what specifics we found on your account. However, we can assure you that we have thoroughly re-reviewed your account, and have confirmed that your account violated our program's Terms and Conditions.

The email was from 'The Google AdSense Team' and provided no useful information.

In my response, I noted

It appears as if you are hiding behind the rationale that providing any substantiation of your allegations would make it easier for others to take advantage of you. This rationale is very similar to the one used by the current U.S. Administration for doing away with a thousand years of jurisprudence and our basic civil rights.

I also told them I would stop using AdSense and encourage other bloggers to do the same.

Google is a very large corporation, and over the two and a quarter years that I've used AdSense, I've earned a total of around $70, so my leaving AdSense won't really affect either me or Google.

Yet I do hope that this blog entry causes others to stop and question whether or not Google can or should be trusted as an advertising vendor.

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