In the traditional ad business, each ad would have been reviewed at least once. No reason Google shouldn't be held responsible and to the same standard.
Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban
171–180 of 227 posts
Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban
#172I 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…
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…
Did you read his comment? He didnt lose $250, he filed a chargeback dispute with the credit card. What he will lose is few points of his credit score due to the fact the charge was recognized (so not a fraud but intentional purchase).
Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban
#173Earlier 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....
If I leave my desktop logged into my account in LA—or it even has some form of autologin enabled and it reboots and auto-logs-in—but I log in from my phone in DC three seconds later, that doesn't mean I traveled from LA to DC in three seconds.
Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban
#174I'm waiting for AI email with phone bots in concert to commit automated identity theft and Medicare fraud.
Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban
#175Earlier 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....
well... it might be normal, if you're on VPN and traveling and what not.
The key, imo, is 'normal'. A new account has no activity, but an account that has, say, 3 years of only ever logging in from IPs located in, say, Detroit area suddenly has logins from Europe and attempts to change email/pass/etc while activity is still coming from Detroit - that's an anomaly. But until there's historical data to compare against, you can't really know. And... unless you've got a lot of computing power to check for that all the time (or outsource that sort of stuff), you probably can't detect that.
Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban
#176This is a really good argument not to "allow unobtrusive ads" in your adblocker. This is an example of an ad that would be allowed. Just FYI this is the default behavior of some adblockers, notably Adblock Plus.
Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban
#177The one that got me was USPS mail forwarding. I am very privy to these things but I must have just misread the URL. 1. Googled “mail forwarding” 2. Must have clicked one of the ads like: https://www.unitedaddressupdate.com 3. Quickly used the autocomplete to fill out all the forms including my credit card information The brilliant part of this scam is that mail forwarding for a year in the US costs $0.99 so the expec…
I was so confused the wehn I went to fill out a change of address form when moving recently. Not only do I have to pay USPS, but they sell my new address and I can't opt out? I don't get any mail that's important enough to put up with that nonsense. Surely it's in the USPS's best interest to encourage people to complete a change of address and yet they seem to do exactly the opposite. Hope whoever moved into my old apartment doesn't mind getting junk mail from whatever airline frequent flier programs I forgot to update.
Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's easy. Those scams operate because the countries/players have access to the US financial system. You provide the incentives to the countries to fix their problem by cutting them completely off. If someone using a bank in Cyprus did it, you tell Cyprus government that in 48 hours the Fed will block all transactions with that bank and you block it. They move to another bank, you repeat it. Eventually Cyprus gover…
Same with Robocallers... Also call them what they are. Call them terrorist and you block off the countries enabling these terrorist groups. Sanction them too
Hang on, how are robocallers terrorists?
Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had quite a rude awakening when I switched to an iPhone recently. I had to adopt NextDNS for its domain-level ad blocking, but it’s amazing how many ads still come through. I don’t know how people browse the web without any sort of ad blocking these days.
iPhone has supported ad-blocking for six years.
I tried a few of the top "content blockers" from the App Store and none of them worked very well (at least the free versions), so I gave up and assumed it just wasn't feasible. I can't imagine I'm the only one with the same experience. I'll revisit this based on your comment and others in this thread.
Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
And yet despite all its obvious shortcomings, people looooooove democracy.