I did, and I got a Rio 500 out of it. I didn't hack it though, basically my method was this: during lunch my friends and I would go into the school computer lab when no one was there and turn on every computer. Then we'd open up as many instances of IE as I could, clicking on an ad and keeping the browser open for the requisite amount of time. After about 8 instances of IE were open the computer would crash, so we'd power cycle the computer and move onto the next one. By the time this computer was rebooted we'd have already gone through all the other computers, so there wouldn't be any loss of time.
The funny thing is that IIRC this wasn't even against the TOS until a few weeks before they went bankrupt. I was also fourteen at the time, same as the submitter. I don't really consider it unethical, or at least were weren't hurting Point Click, because they were basically in the business of scamming advertisers. And the advertisers didn't care because they were getting $800 million valuations because of all their hits. And the investors were happy to invest at these prices even though they knew what was happening, because they thought that the economics of business had changed forever and in just another two years they'd be insanely rich. And all of my friends and I, being fourteen, thought the investors were right.
So even now it's hard for me to feel bad about it. At the time it wasn't even clear that Point Click would go bankrupt or that there was a larger economic bubble, we all just thought the free stuff was somehow because of Moore's law. And because we did legitimately work pretty hard for those points, we just sort of assumed that whatever we were doing was somehow creating value.
Haha, all the fourteen year olds doing silly things unite! Indeed, I was 14 too when I was going after them. It was one of the first bots that I wrote in VB. Making the mouse move to simulate a real click automatically was tonnes of fun:)
I also wrote a NetZero ad remover. Of course, every other kid on the block was writing one too. Then there was allAdvantage. And the list goes on.
The funny thing is that IIRC this wasn't even against the TOS until a few weeks before they went bankrupt. I was also fourteen at the time, same as the submitter. I don't really consider it unethical, or at least were weren't hurting Point Click, because they were basically in the business of scamming advertisers. And the advertisers didn't care because they were getting $800 million valuations because of all their hits. And the investors were happy to invest at these prices even though they knew what was happening, because they thought that the economics of business had changed forever and in just another two years they'd be insanely rich. And all of my friends and I, being fourteen, thought the investors were right.
So even now it's hard for me to feel bad about it. At the time it wasn't even clear that Point Click would go bankrupt or that there was a larger economic bubble, we all just thought the free stuff was somehow because of Moore's law. And because we did legitimately work pretty hard for those points, we just sort of assumed that whatever we were doing was somehow creating value.