Just to be very clear here (God how I've tried to be clear throughout this ordeal)...
I got a note saying that "your account has been terminated for violating our terms of service". It went on to say something about the section for "creating invalid clicks by deceptive means" (which I did not do). The thing is, when Google claims this was occurring, I was literally 600 miles away in New Orleans on business travel and not at my machine (which was on).
I have written them roughly a dozen times and get three rotating stock answers, including one which says that "explaining to you why you were terminated would disclose proprietary information" (gee, an IP address..)... There is no contact number (that they will answer), there is no one listening, and I'm fairly certain that the big bad Google couldn't care less.
I'm just putting two and two together here, and may be coming out with the wrong answer, but I can only assemble the puzzle with the few parts I've got.
Several friends have suggested possibilities including IP Spoofing and my machine being hacked into, but neither really makes sense. If it were IP spoofing, it would have conflicted with my connection to the Web. (I *have* had continual -- verifiable -- problems with my connection for about two weeks where it simply drops the connection at random requiring a modem hardboot to fix). I can't believe however that someone in the Amiga community would hate me enough to literally break into my machine (which would be difficult) then use it to continually click on my banner advertisements.
So... That leaves two real possibilities that I know of;
1) Someone (one person) here was "trying to help" and clicked on the banners several hundred times per day. (768 or so per day according to the click counter)
2) Someone (one person) hates me, the advertisements, and/or this site enough to literally work at getting me banned from Google (remember, this affects me far beyond Amiga.org).
I don't know what's going on, but when the thread on Moobunny started, then the thread got bumped here, then things got crazy, it seemed very much as though certain people were stepping up to claim responsibility.
I am still appealing to Google for a second chance, but whomever did this went too far. Not only did they hurt Amiga.org, but it hurt the Amiga platform as a whole. We were making GOOD progress attracting new members by placing ads (which were SUPPOSED to be paid for by displaying the ads but now have to come out of the donation money -- sincere thanks to those of you who've helped out).
Far worse, if I believe that this was intentional sabotage, someone made this personal and screwed me out of the ability to generate a dime off of the 15 other sites I had either in planning or operation. Let me state again, Amiga.org (and I) wasn't making a dime off of Google Advertisements for Amiga.org itself, but the ads I placed were getting people onto our site and from here, it was to be a gateway to other sites (such as whyzzat.com, amigaos.info, spyzero.com, etcetera).
Given that this smeghead has disrupted the very core of my plans, I take that action quite personally so forgive me if I seem a "little upset" over it all. It would be very much like if you bought a car so that you could drive to work and I snuck over in the middle of the night and ripped out the distributor. Bad form..
Wayne