Google Ad Disguising Itself as www.gimp.org • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Ad Disguising Itself as www.gimp.org

#161

Post by londons_explore » Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 11:26 PM UTC

RamRodification wrote: post #139

mcv wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having the actual url be completely different from the displayed url simply shouldn't be possible. Allowing that invites scams like these. At the very least, they need to be the same domain.

Yes! This is crazy to me. How can this not be a thing that has already been discovered and instantly fixed?

Many ad buyers are not-so-sophisticated...

They might work for BigCo, but rather than have the ad point to bigco.com/product they instead have the ad point to tinyurl/bitly so they can track how many people click the ad and repoint it to another URL easily.

There is a whole industry of these redirection services that gather stats, direct users different directions based on mobile/desktop or country. It isn't rare to bounce a user via a whole chain of them.

To support all those users, ad networks have to allow the apparent URL and actual link target to differ.

Re: Google Ad Disguising Itself as www.gimp.org

#162

Post by taormina » Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 11:28 PM UTC

rossjudson wrote: post #160

It never ceases to amaze me that people will read something like this article and just assume it's correct. Put on your thinking caps and play the game. What else could be going on here?

It never ceases to amaze me that people will read something this article or comment and just assume Google is correct.

Re: Google Ad Disguising Itself as www.gimp.org

#163

Post by detaro » Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 11:31 PM UTC

RamRodification wrote: post #139

mcv wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having the actual url be completely different from the displayed url simply shouldn't be possible. Allowing that invites scams like these. At the very least, they need to be the same domain.

Yes! This is crazy to me. How can this not be a thing that has already been discovered and instantly fixed?

It's a "feature". So you can link to blafoo.advertisinganalytics.com/weird-looking?tracking=link but what the user sees looks like normal and "safe" brand.com

Re: Google Ad Disguising Itself as www.gimp.org

#164

Post by XCSme » Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 11:33 PM UTC

hedora wrote: post #64

In this particular case, I suspect a trademark complaint against Google would make sense. Google misrepresented the ad as the product of the Gimp project, and were paid as a result. They usually use an "obeying the law would not scale" type argument in court, but that would clearly be bullshit in this case. They have a business relationship with the ad buyer, and should have verified their affiliation with gimp.org.…

> "obeying the law would not scale"

Then don't scale...

Re: Google Ad Disguising Itself as www.gimp.org

#165

Post by badcarbine » Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 11:38 PM UTC

femto113 wrote: post #96

henrydark wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some laws were put into place before the current internet scale was imagined and would probably not be made today

Internet scale companies like Google happily embrace intellectual property laws when it's their IP on the line, they just don't care about anyone else's. And it's not an issue of "can't scale": Google's ad revenue is bigger than the entire GDP of Kentucky--they could literally hire 1% of the US population to work in fraud management and still turn a profit.

How would you manage a fraud department of 3 million people?

Re: Google Ad Disguising Itself as www.gimp.org

#166

Post by TacticalCoder » Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 11:53 PM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #47

Pathogen-David wrote: post #6

This is also a huge issue with Blender and pops up on /r/blender from time to time. (Here's a few random recent examples: https://redd.it/xxkx5s https://redd.it/vvrxko https://redd.it/xwkky8 https://redd.it/vuqu1r ) Ad networks and content providers get up in arms over widespread ad blocking but then allow stuff like this through.

Turns out uBlock Origin is the best anti-malware software there is. For some reason friends and family just don't seem to get malware anymore after I installed it on their browsers.

I put PiHole on a Raspberry Pi as the home's DNS and every time it blocks these links. I still click on them thinking they're taking me to the correct site, but then I realized PiHole "saved me". I configured my wife's computers to use the Pi too and she loves it.

Re: Google Ad Disguising Itself as www.gimp.org

#167

Post by yakubin » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 12:03 AM UTC

Aerroon wrote: post #147

MereInterest wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be true, but why a judge or jury would accept it as justification is beyond me. "My business model requires me to break the law." is a condemnation of the business model, not a justification.

Because if you tried to actually police this then everything in life would grind to a halt. It would be like expecting the government to deal with every single crime. It's particularly problematic when a business is providing a platform for other entities to post a message. We don't hold the post office liable for transferring copyrighted/trademarked content, do we?

This case is more akin to a TV network, since the ad is publicly broadcasted based on what people are watching/reading. It’s not private correspondence.

Re: Google Ad Disguising Itself as www.gimp.org

#168

Post by eyelidlessness » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 12:39 AM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #56

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah Google Ads lies about the destination URL, it always has. Which is why the correct choice is to consider Google Ad links malicious by default. There's actually no way to be sure where clicking them will send you, and tons of fraudsters have put scam ads with the official legit domain listed. I've seen both Amazon and Best Buy URLs on scam ads.

The entire hackjacking of the URLs needs to stop. It is destroying the web. From Safari hiding the full path in the browser in the name of "minimalism" to AMP and all the other bullshit. URLs are sacred. Please don't fuck with them. Please.

> From Safari hiding the full path in the browser in the name of "minimalism"

That was never the intent of hiding the path, it was and is to help users identify what a site’s domain actually is. To distinguish malicious sites with recognizable domain-like strings in/overlapping their paths as well as malicious sites with recognizable domains as subdomains. It’s not a panacea, but it’s effective. Chrome (and IIRC Firefox) also experimented with similar approaches before ultimately splitting the difference with higher contrast text for the domain.

Re: Google Ad Disguising Itself as www.gimp.org

#169

Post by mxkopy » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 12:46 AM UTC

ptato wrote: post #111

matheusmoreira wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if ads were 100% legit verified links, they would still be scams. Advertising is inherently untrustworthy. Why do people trust anything a corporation says about their own products? In the best case scenario, they're highlighting the pros and omitting the cons. Usually they're just straight up lying. I want real opinions written by real people with no conflict of interest. People who are't getting paid by the cor…

Advertising is not meant to be educational, it's meant to make you aware the product exists. Of course you're don't have to trust what the company is saying, but now you know their product exists and what it does. If it was something you were looking for, you can now research it and ask for opinion.

In a post-Google world the purpose of advertising is to influence the internal associations someone has with a product or brand

Re: Google Ad Disguising Itself as www.gimp.org

#170

Post by matheusmoreira » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 12:48 AM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #114

matheusmoreira wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Quoted post unavailable.

I wasn't even talking about paid links specifically. It's advertising in general that's the problem. Call me a child all you want, I don't care. The simple fact remains that they have an inherent conflict of interest. It's not an absurd argument at all. People who want to sell you something have every incentive to distort the truth and only fools believe them.