Google will warn users when sites contain social engineering ads

DoubleClick certainly is not the worst offender of this, but they are the biggest player. Is Google going to block/penalize the sites of their own customers? That would feel weird. Is Google going to block/penalize the sites of their competitors? That would also feel weird.

> Social engineering, in the context of information security, refers to psychological manipulation of people into performing actions or divulging confidential information. A type of confidence trick for the purpose of information gathering, fraud, or system access, it differs from a traditional "con" in that it is often one of many steps in a more complex fraud scheme.

Honest question: When you take a look at the "manipulation of people into divulging confidential information" part, wouldn't this, by definition, incriminate the vast majority of the modern ("Internet 2.0") web, WRT unremovable-cookies, tracking, "analytics", and so forth?

I fully admit there is a difference between downloading a random AdobeFlashPlayerUpdate.exe or MacKeeperApp.dmg from a malicious site and having all your personal data and information about you sent off to a 3rd party company......but where do we(or Google, here) draw the line?

Just last week, Facebook started gleaning contacts from my phone and injecting them into the "People you may know" page - these were people I did NOT want on my Facebook - ranging from business contacts to tinder matches. I knew this was (sadly) standard behavior for users of the Facebook App, or users of "Facebook for Mobile", but I have never given my phone number to facebook, not once, and I only access it via a mobile browser.

Is it social engineering to see my recent searches in the Amazon app on mobile reposted on Facebook on my desktop Web browser?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineering_(security)

In that model you got a free listing in a category or two but had to pay to get either additional listings (in other categories) or for an advertisement (of various sizes) in order to get phone calls. The rationale (in addition to making money obviously) was that there had to be a way to determine the serious people trying to hawk a particular or good or service from the casual players. The thinking was that if a person took out a listing or an ad saying they "sold recumbent bicycles" they must be doing that because they were willing to pay to say so. So the theory is if you pay for say something you must be fairly serious about what you are saying (in terms of things you are selling).