Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban • Hacker News Board

Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban

#121

Post by vimacs2 » Fri, May 14, 2021, 10:54 AM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #10

sen wrote: post #5

I teach everyone in my family to never trust the first few sponsored results now matter how convincing they may be. As far as I’m concerned Google know exactly what they’re doing and are actively complicit in perpetuating online scams against one family and friends. Are we seriously supposed to believe a company of their size, with their talent pool, and their money, can’t filter out such blatantly obvious crap? Sure…

This being a democracy, and this sort of thing going on for well over a decade, it must be "the will of the people".

Calling the US a true democracy would have been a stretch at any point in it's history but in the age of lobbyists, two party entrenchment, and arbitrary term limits, it's more accurate to call the US a capitalist plutocracy. You get to vote somebody into office, though unless if it's an member of one of two parties, it's functionally meaningless.

Also, once that person gets voted into office, they immediately have to deal with both lobbyists and members of the deep state that are already in those lobbyists pockets. If you try and go against the will of the state or corporate America (not the people, mind you), the CIA and corporate media will relentlessly smear you and try to demolish your likelihood of re-election. You can also have members of the house of representatives with abysmal approval ratings actively impede legislation with overwhelming public support. Assuming you can somehow overcome these odds, you then have to contend with the fact that you have at most 8 years to achieve what you need to accomplish before likely having the next one in charge try their best to dismantle your accomplishments.

Note: some might find it odd that I consider term limits evidence of the superficial nature of US democracy. It's important to realise the motivation behind the introduction of term limits in the first place was following FDR's 3 re-elections, Republicans were worried that if they did not introduce term limits, they would never get a chance at getting elected again. This is because FDR's policies had overwhelming support of the people - democrats and republicans alike. Of course, what really happened was that future Democrat and Republican presidents lacked the backbone to resist kowtowing to lobbying and corruption but the damage has been done. Anybody seeking to remove term limits would be (and not without some justification) accused of trying to turn themselves a dictator.

Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban

#122

Post by nkrisc » Fri, May 14, 2021, 10:59 AM UTC

exporectomy wrote: post #94

FriedrichN wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People think I'm paranoid checking domains, certificates, and bank numbers but it's a small price to pay as you found out. You lost $250, some lose thousands. This stuff needs to be regulated, companies like Google need to be held accountable for what they serve up to users. No more hiding behind this shield of "we're just a platform" when they damn well know they're the platform. It's all fun and games until your (g…

As long as they actually provide the service they're advertising, it doesn't sound quite as bad as an actual scam. Reselling something at a markup but with better advertising is common in commerce. Up to the customer to decide if the price is what they're willing to pay. It's only government services that have a kind of aura of "don't be a dick" around them, maybe because people feel they can trust them not to be pro…

They’re no different than the homeless guys who take free newspapers and try to badger you into buying them.

Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban

#123

Post by daveoc64 » Fri, May 14, 2021, 10:59 AM UTC

harles wrote: post #6

kiwijamo wrote: post #3

Even more reason to switch to other search engines such as DuckDuckGo.

Is DuckDuckGo better at this or just a smaller target people ignore? A couple quick searches didn’t turn up anything, but sure seems like they’re vulnerable to the same attack vector.

I just put "renew driving licence" into DuckDuckGo from the UK and there are two ads before the official Government website. [0]

There's also a hilarious eBay ad on the side offering driving licence renewals!

The first [1] does say several times that it's not the official site, but they are charging a £57.60 fee for submitting something that can be done on the Government's website for free.

The second [2] is also quite clear that it's unofficial, but the price isn't visible, as trying to use the call to action button results in an error message.

Putting in "renew driving licence official" results in similar ads being shown first.

While it seems these sites aren't doing anything illegal, both they and the search engines are profiting from people that don't know better.

[0] - https://imgur.com/a/bIlcBvG [1] - https://drivinglicenceshelp.co.uk/apply?msclkid=ec0c69ce50b7... [2] - https://drivinglicencerenewalsonline.co.uk/

Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban

#124

Post by saddlerustle » Fri, May 14, 2021, 11:05 AM UTC

raister wrote: post #117

jimktrains2 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that isn't really odd. People travel. Should my account be locked everytime I visit family? I permanently lost access to may aim account a while back because I tried to connect while traveling out of country.

The key point here is that it's impossible to travel long distances in a short amount of time... Of course people travel. What's not normal is to log in in Miami and in the next minute log in Seattle....

VPNs are pretty mainstream these days. If you talk to anyone working on anti-abuse you'd find the answer to most "Why don't you just.." ideas is because it'd impact many orders of magnitude more legitimate users than victims.

Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban

#125

Post by tacticalDonut » Fri, May 14, 2021, 11:07 AM UTC

Mauricebranagh wrote: post #92

Its harder than it looks to solve this problem. And its also not that simple to weed out bad actors when normally the government sites that should rank are probably hopeless and the senior civil servants in charge knowledge of the web is “in need of some improvement” Google and Bing could turn up the YMYL (“your money or your life” ) knob but they would also need to employ higher paid local people to vet these sorts…

I've tried pitching similar roles in Government on the DoD side of the house for knowledge workers like Software Dev and Data Scientists.

It's hard to get traction though when the folks making the decisions feel threatened that a 25 year old is going to be making the same as them and be the same "rank".

I think part of the solution needs to be creating it on a separate scale than GS, similar to an SL or ST position, but geared specifically towards knowledge workers. That's a solution that would probably require congressional involvement though...

Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban

#126

Post by PeterisP » Fri, May 14, 2021, 11:07 AM UTC

raister wrote: post #117

jimktrains2 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that isn't really odd. People travel. Should my account be locked everytime I visit family? I permanently lost access to may aim account a while back because I tried to connect while traveling out of country.

The key point here is that it's impossible to travel long distances in a short amount of time... Of course people travel. What's not normal is to log in in Miami and in the next minute log in Seattle....

I turn on my company VPN and the next minute my network connections come from their HQ halfway across the world.

Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban

#127

Post by subandi » Fri, May 14, 2021, 11:19 AM UTC

gundmc wrote: post #46

eloisius wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lately I’ve been wondering if a niche search engine popular with hackers and not the general public could run circles around Google search results just because scammers and content farms wouldn’t be incentivized to game it like they are Google. It frustrates me a lot. I don’t even know how to find useful information online anymore for everyday things like “how hot is too hot outside for a cat?” I invariably land on a…

> I don’t even know how to find useful information online anymore for everyday things like “how hot is too hot outside for a cat?” Maybe this wasn't a real example, but searching exactly this (quotes not included) returned the answer in a knowledge box at the top of the page and the first several organic results had the answer very clearly in the text.

The knowledge box can be 100% wrong, I reported a case where the shown answer was taken from a pop-quiz site - but it wasn't the actual answer, just the first possible (and diametrically wrong) of multiples choices for a user to click on.

Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban

#128

Post by acdha » Fri, May 14, 2021, 11:37 AM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #9

sen wrote: post #5

I teach everyone in my family to never trust the first few sponsored results now matter how convincing they may be. As far as I’m concerned Google know exactly what they’re doing and are actively complicit in perpetuating online scams against one family and friends. Are we seriously supposed to believe a company of their size, with their talent pool, and their money, can’t filter out such blatantly obvious crap? Sure…

Just so we're clear, there are no "sponsored results" on Google. There are results, and there are ads. It matters because if you lose the distinction you will lose the ability to remember what "sponsored results" were. On Yahoo! search, all of the results were paid. You paid more for a higher position. This dubious service was provided by Overture, and every search engine except Google was a customer of Overture's te…

If you search for “employee identification number” the top of the page will be an ad which differs from the first search result (which requires 2 full screen vertical scrolls to reach on an iPhone 11) only for the presence of “ad” in 6px type instead of the favicon and replacing the tiny 3 dot menu with an i icon.

Now, I’m sure a Google PR person would insist that this tiny bit of text is a clear and unambiguous visual distinction but they’d be lying to you hoping that you are unfamiliar with eye-tracking research showing how little things like that matter, not to mention the way Google has trained users not to notice by using the smallest icon sizes and progressively removing as many visual indicators over the years as they think they can get away with.

The fact that people at Google feel the need to claim that this is a meaningful distinction tells you that it isn’t. Nobody at Google got defensive about this back when they didn’t offer advertisers a way to get the top result because it was completely obvious that ads were separate.

Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban

#129

Post by ahelwer » Fri, May 14, 2021, 11:44 AM UTC

ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #87

ahelwer wrote: post #37

I fell prey to this. Might have been the exact same website, too. Had had a drink with dinner, thought heck why not file for my EIN for an independent consulting LLC I was creating? Was using a fresh OS install where I hadn't yet installed Firefox with an adblocker. Usual defenses were weakened. Boom, $250 down the drain before I really thought it all through. Fortunately I was able to get it refunded by initiating a…

Another common one for new LLCs is threatening, official looking letters telling you you need a workplace safety poster or you will go to jail/pay monstrous fines. The law is real but only applies in very specific circumstances and the letters come from companies graciously offering to sell you overpriced posters. It freaked the hell out of my partner when we got that, had to explain to her at 3AM that we weren't goi…

Oh yes I got that one! It really does work as a sort of DDOS attack against new businesses, you're trying to get all this stuff sorted out and the scammers know how easy it is to sneak in one more form to be filled out & fee paid.

Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban

#130

Post by 6510 » Fri, May 14, 2021, 11:47 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #104

exporectomy wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In genuine scams, yes. But nobody will accidentally pay millions for a business license that's also available for free.

That's true, that's outside of the expected range. But confusion of authority is the same principle at this level or at a higher one it doesn't really matter. This particular context has a low expected value but the same principle in another context can cost very large amounts of money. Recently a big dutch retailer got caught out by a small thing, a suppliers administrative email got hacked and the company as a resu…

Some "service" numbers in the Netherlands advertise in google by showing a real phone number (for a gov institution or a business) that links to their paid number. People wait for 10-30 min then are call-forwarded to the real number. They may make multiple calls like that until the phone bill arrives that lists on average "40 euro service numbers" but even then they might not see though the scam, even if you see though it is hard to not just repeat the mistake. I suspect they steal a measured amount of money and time per user as from what I hear its always 30-50 euro.