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How I advertise malicious software on Google Ads

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Re: How I advertise malicious software on Google Ads

#91

Post by rootusrootus »

WarmWash wrote: post #75
Toutouxc wrote: post #25

That’s surprising, because in my opinion Google doesn’t care about malicious anything. The other day I had to look for something on YouTube on my dad’s computer with a disabled ad-blocker. I saw like 30 ads in 15 minutes, every single one of them was a scam, literally not a single non-fraudulent ad. Google is full cartoon villain evil at this point.

The more you ad-block and tracker block, the more scammy the ads when you take down the guards. People who never do any sort of blocking are the most valuable ad-targets, and hence get the highest bids when their views are auctioned. They get Toyota, Coke, and Downy ads. Scam advertisers are bottom feeders and the "advertiser of last resort". Google doesn't really care that much about people with blank profiles, and…

> it just doesn't make business sense to put a lot of resources into cleaning up ads that pay google nothing and mostly go to people who temporarily disabled their ad-block

I see where you are coming from, but getting burned by a scam Google advertised to me just pushed me to cutting Google out of my life completely. If it were the occasional bad actor slipping through I might have been more forgiving, but the scam that got to me had become well known for at least the last 18 months. If Google doesn't care enough to keep the well known bad actors off their service, then I protect myself & my family by blocking Google.

Low quality ads should be the bottom of the barrel. Actual criminal activity should not be anywhere in the barrel.

Re: How I advertise malicious software on Google Ads

#93

Post by deaton »

I've used adblockers, revanced, and whatever else for years, so I don't see many ads, but every time I'm on a computer without this stuff installed I am appalled by how many scams get through. At some point, Google must have realized that nobody is going to come after them for selling ad space to scammers (possibly because of section 230 of the CDA?) and hey, scammers are willing to pay enough for it to be worth it.

Re: How I advertise malicious software on Google Ads

#94

Post by jerf »

kevindamm wrote: post #60
trainingonme wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question here then, is when will we see a competitor enter the market who both cares about getting it right and is actually able to compete with google maps

Having seen the abuse vectors that get thrown at this and similar products, I suspect it is less about whether they care and more about finding a suitable threshold for some arbitrary features, or moments of demand exceeding the available moderators. The repetitive 6 minutes make me suspect there are reports timing out in the moderator queue and the automod doesn't like images or something. Or, perhaps a part of the…

This is the key to the problem that I think people are missing, possibly because they kind of want to miss it. Google and the other companies hiding behind LLMs and primarily doing it because they can't operate at the scale they do, with the dedicated ecosystems to gaming them that they develop, without this hiding. They can't afford humans to review in a minute or two what scammers can generate in fractions of a second, not even at their scale.

Now, I'm enough of a fan of decentralization and the destruction of these massive sites with way too much control to say that I'm perfectly comfortable saying that they should be mandated to handle these things more sensibly and with more humans. That such a plan would have the side effect of breaking them up into vastly, vastly smaller pieces, causing an technological Cambrian explosion of various sites and diversity resulting in the parasites no longer being able to focus all their firepower on a very small set of targets, is for me a bonus, if not the main goal. However, I, and anyone who agrees with me on this, is rather clearly in the minority.

In the meantime, if we're going to have things the size of Google or Facebook, there simply is no solution where we all get human review whenever we ask for it, because instantly every spammer and abuser will ask for the human review. There just isn't a solution. It looks like there is an obvious solution when you consider "how will Google review this one application" but that's not the landscape Google faces. They have to solve the problem of how to deal with the entire landscape of requests they face at once.

Re: How I advertise malicious software on Google Ads

#95

Post by urbandw311er »

huhtenberg wrote: post #16

We had that, almost a decade ago. The cause was that the site was in fact compromised and at a certain very discreet URL it hosted a bunch of pages for legit products that linked to external shady sites. They got in through some PHP hole. Got lucky they didn't do more damage. However as per various Google pages and dashboards no issues were present except being tagged as a malware distribution site. The remedy was to…

I mean sure that makes sense - but the OP isn’t even getting any information to confirm or deny this. If that’s the case Google should explain the issue.

Re: How I advertise malicious software on Google Ads

#96

Post by Toutouxc »

WarmWash wrote: post #75
Toutouxc wrote: post #25

That’s surprising, because in my opinion Google doesn’t care about malicious anything. The other day I had to look for something on YouTube on my dad’s computer with a disabled ad-blocker. I saw like 30 ads in 15 minutes, every single one of them was a scam, literally not a single non-fraudulent ad. Google is full cartoon villain evil at this point.

The more you ad-block and tracker block, the more scammy the ads when you take down the guards. People who never do any sort of blocking are the most valuable ad-targets, and hence get the highest bids when their views are auctioned. They get Toyota, Coke, and Downy ads. Scam advertisers are bottom feeders and the "advertiser of last resort". Google doesn't really care that much about people with blank profiles, and…

That might make sense, but to clarify, my dad has disabled his ad blocker a few months ago by accident, so he’s fair game. An older guy too, I guess that’s why there were so many scams.

Re: How I advertise malicious software on Google Ads

#97

Post by mig39 »

mfro wrote: post #50
0xbrayo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple Maps maybe?

Apple Maps is much better in my experience. I've never had an update rejected.

I've sent in corrections to Apple Maps in Portugal (shopping mall is 1km away from the location on Apple Maps) and Canada (speed camera does not exist). Both were taken care of within a couple of days.

Re: How I advertise malicious software on Google Ads

#98

Post by AlexandrB »

0xbrayo wrote: post #37
trainingonme wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question here then, is when will we see a competitor enter the market who both cares about getting it right and is actually able to compete with google maps

Apple Maps maybe?

Apple Maps has Apple Ads and Apple Ads are awful.

Re: How I advertise malicious software on Google Ads

#99

Post by mavamaarten »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #14

Google has forgotten the plot. A quick tangent story follows: I attempted to add a Tesla Supercharger as it went live to Google Maps. I was the very first to pay to recharge at the new location. The process went something like this: 1st time: Uploaded 4 photos, local business info, current charger prices, and GPS coordinates. Google replied this would be sent to human review. It was rejected within 6 minutes. 2nd att…

Another thing they apparently do is let business owners (e.g. hotels) remove negative reviews because they're "defamatory".

I had a very factual 3-star review on a hotel that was supposedly very quiet, but was super noisy and the AC was not working. And there was literally nobody at the reception at the time of check-out and nobody picked up the phone either. All in all, nothing serious, but worth a review. Purely factual stuff, nothing bad-mouthed, just my experience and three stars.

A few months later the review was removed because it was "defamatory". I was able to get it reinstated by sending them proof of payment to the hotel and proof that I was there. A few months later, it was removed again! That same dance was repeated six times..... What a weird system.

Re: How I advertise malicious software on Google Ads

#100

Post by StilesCrisis »

Retr0id wrote: post #87
usernametaken29 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a strategy. Ask RyanAir. They systematically shut down any way to communicate with them, except lawsuits. Tried their chatbot, hotline, email, letter, fax, small claims court (I’m not joking they don’t even care about that). Unless you turn up with a court order and confiscate a plane, they simply won’t give a fuck, and I’m sure it’s a tactic to deter 99% of their problems before they start

> small claims court (I’m not joking they don’t even care about that) If they don't show up, doesn't that mean you win by default? (And then you can indeed send a bailiff to seize a plane...)

Yes, you can win in small claims if the other party doesn't show. I suspect a plane might exceed the "small claims" limit though!
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