Okay, so this lands in my inbox yesterday:

Hello David Roberts,

It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated on
the Google ads on your site(s). We have therefore disabled your Google
AdSense account. Please understand that this step was taken in an
effort to protect the interest of the AdWords advertisers.

A publisher's site may not have invalid clicks on any ad(s), including
but not limited to clicks generated by:

- a publisher on his own web pages
- a publisher encouraging others to click on his ads
- automated clicking programs or any other deceptive software
- a publisher altering any portion of the ad code or changing the
layout, behavior, targeting, or delivery of ads for any reason

Practices such as these are in violation of the Google AdSense Terms
and Conditions and program polices, which can be viewed at:

https://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms?hl=en_US
https://www.google.com/adsense/policies?hl=en_US

Publishers disabled for invalid click activity are not allowed further
participation in AdSense and do not receive any further payment. The
earnings on your account will be properly returned to the affected
advertisers.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

That's it. I tried logging into my Adsense account and found:

Account Not Active

An AdSense account does not exist for this login, as it is associated with an unapproved application. For more information about your application, please review the message we sent to the email address you provided with your application.

I was a bit befuddled. I certainly haven't been operating a click-fraud ring. The ad volume hasn't yet paid for my hosting account charges, let alone allowed me to quit my day job. I admit to having clicked on a link or two myself, but only when I was truly interested in the actual advert (such as the Das Keyboard keyboard I talked about previously). Certainly, my clicks were limited events, not designed to fill my bank account. I just figured they would filter them out anyway using a cookie or some such.

So what is one's recourse when one is terminated with extreme prejudice by Google? Certainly, it's their service and they have a right to allow anybody to participate or not, but this feels a bit like a drive-by shooting where something just hits you out of the blue. If anybody reads this and works for Google and can get me to the right people over there to talk this though, I'd love to have a chat. Honestly, in the past I have found the folks at Google pretty fun and this note was certainly a surprise.

I'll be sure to keep readers updated as to how this progresses, even if I have to switch my blog to Typepad or something (using Blogger, I now find myself suddenly exposed...). I know little about click-fraud right now, but I have a feeling I'm going to find out plenty.