Click Harvesting

Below is a message that I sent to the editor of ZDnet regarding a deceptive practice that I noticed on some pages of their site a while back. I didn't like it from the start, but felt like voicing my opinion today since it happened to me once again...

---------------Start of Message-----------------

Since when did the blank sides of a page become a danger-zone for clicking? I (and I suspect a lot of other people) normally use this area on the side of a page to give the page focus so that scrolling with the mouse will work. It appears some marketing genius at your company has realized this and now has instructed the site developers to annex this completly blank space to harvest these stray clicks. I consider this cheating to get ad revenue since I didn't intentionally click on an ad. I urge you to advocate for relinquishing the negative space and quit desigining the site in such a way that causes people to click on a url to a site or ad that they didn't intend to visit.

----------------End of Message------------------

You can see what I'm talking about on this page, but be careful not to click on the sides of the page unless you want to help contribute to them continuing this sneaky and underhanded click-harvesting tactic.