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Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban

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

#191

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

techrat wrote: post #106
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…

> This stuff needs to be regulated, Regulated? Fraud is illegal. It needs to be PROSECUTED.

The problem is that it's hard to draw a clear line between legitimate consulting, and fraud.

If the government forms are byzantine and you go to a lawyer and pay them $250 to fill them for you, you aren't being scammed.

If you visit a web site that clearly tells you that it's a third party website, you can waste your time with the horrible government site, or you can pay 10 bucks and use their optimized form, you're not being scammed.

If the web site now shrinks their disclosure a bit, maybe moves it below the fold, jacks up the price... at some point 90% of the people would agree that they're "scamming" people, in the colloquial sense, but this lack of a clear line makes it hard to charge them criminally.

The way to handle this would be to

1. require clear disclosure for any kind of "online 'government bureaucracy help' service", with everything (font size, contrast, cannot be showing anything else at the same time to avoid drowning the disclosure out)

2. Make providing such "services" without the disclosure punishable by serious jail time, confiscation of any earnings, etc.

3. Actually enforce it, including through international arrest warrants, going after credit card providers when the scammers are abroad, etc.

4. Follow up to see if the problem went away and adjust the requirements until it does.

Omit any of these, and the problem will stay. And right now, none of these seems to happen.

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

#192

Post by vxNsr »

pawsforapplase wrote: post #162
stephen_g wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I use 1blocker too, it's fairly good but annoying they only give you monthly rule updates (unless a major site breaks) unless you pay a subscription. Even when I bought the 'Pro' version, and then they changed to a subscription model... Still, it works pretty well. But how I wish it was possible to have uBlock Origin running in mobile Safari (and desktop Safari for that matter)...

They do have a one-time payment option of about $40. But in my experience, it simply does not work compared to other platforms. I still see a lot of ads even with their strictest settings, and it also seems to break a lot of sites without having any toggle switches in the browser UI. It's gotten to the point where I put the iPhone down and pick up another device if I need to access a website. After a few months, I'd…

Idk what you’re talking about or what sites you’re going to, I’ve never seen ads using the default 1blocker settings.

I use DNSCloak to block ads in other apps. It’s obv not as good as an element blocker but it’s great for when I need to use chrome or some random store app that inserts ads.

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

#193

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

raister wrote: post #96
aidos wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s rough out there. Was helping a friend of a friend last night who had been scammed into giving out her Instagram password. They’ve change the email / phone / pw on the account. In her case the account is actually a substantial business (art) portfolio with a lot of followers. Naturally, after a little digging, I discovered that her email was using the same pw and had also been compromised (hackers deleted the ema…

You usually login in the West Coast, then, all of a sudden, you started login in the East Coast -- hey, GOOGLE, FACEBOOK, isn't that ODD????????????????? I can't believe they act as they don't know what's going on and have no means to deter this. They SHOULD BE LIABLE!

I usually log in from one city in Germany, now I suddenly log in first from another city in Germany. It's the same user agent, but an empty cookie jar. Should the login be denied?

Now I log in from a city in the Netherlands, 20 minutes later. From a phone, again, empty cookie jar. Even with a helicopter there's no way to make it there that fast. Should the login be denied?

(The answer is "no, because I've traveled to another city to visit a conference, and the conference network was routed in a weird way and the GeoIP data for their exit IP was incorrect".)

People jump locations all the time, for reasons like remote desktop sessions, mobile roaming, personal and company VPNs, etc.

Locking out a real user has a significant cost.

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

#194

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

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…

Don't rely on training. Effective technical measures exist that block most of these social engineering attacks before they even reach the victims. They're called adblockers. Letting inexperienced people browse the Internet without one is reckless.

I don't think Google has an interest in keeping those ads. The reputational damage, and adblock installs it drives, must be more than the few clicks those ads make. Pissing off the user (or more likely, whoever helps the user clean up the aftermath) to the point that they install an ad blocker costs all future ad revenue from that person.

But until not just Google, but all the other ad networks, have cleaned up their act to the point where I can safely let my mother browse the Internet without an adblocker, I'm installing an adblocker on every machine I support.

So many bad things come from ads: Scams like this, tech support scams, ads tricking users into installing adware/malware, really attractive looking offers that sell you utter garbage (with promises that it's risk-free since you can return them, except shipping is on you and costs more than the product), resource usage on your computer, tracking/fingerprinting, disgusting imagery of various nasty diseases being shoved in your face ... there are very few benefits ads have to you, and they're vastly outweighed by the risks and costs, especially for users who don't know how to avoid being taken advantage of.

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

#195

Post by dehrmann »

Some of this has to be tied to the evolution of ads in SERPs. They've gone from being on the right rail in a different format and different colors to being in the results, with with a perpetually lightning yellow background so you know it's sponsored. Currently, I the only meaningful difference is it says "Ad."

I used to work for a comparison shopping engine. The traffic was a mix of paid and organic search. We thought about using paid traffic to test page titles and descriptions for organic pages because it's not like users could tell the difference.

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

#196

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

dcdc123 wrote: post #176

This 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.

The other reason not to allow it (and to replace Adblock Plus with e.g. uBlock Origin) is that Adblock Plus decided they like money more than actually limiting themselves to unobtrusive ads, and were allowing the disgusting Taboola/Outbrain/Clickbrain clickbait (not sure which of the three it was, all the same garbage) to be shown.

The best part was that some websites had two versions, one more aggressive one, and a slightly toned down one. If you didn't have an adblocker, you got the first one. If you did, you got the second one, because apparently the ABP people did draw the line somewhere.

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

#197

Post by open-source-ux »

ollybee wrote: post #43

This does not seem be a problem in the UK, searches topics that might be prone to this all seem to give the correct .gov.uk site as the first result with no ads that could be described as misleading. I wonder if the UK government, advertising standards agencies and trading standards authorities have put more pressure on google? Or perhaps the legal landscape here makes it untenable to operate such a scam business.

"This does not seem be a problem in the UK"

Unfortunately, it is a problem:

"Why can't Google get a grip on rip-off ads?" : https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56886957

Excerpts from the above article:

> Adverts for unofficial services selling government documents such as travel permits and driving licences are against Google's own rules.

> In the UK, changing the address on your driving licence is free - but Google consistently showed adverts for services charging £49.99.

>Websites like these are not illegal and customers may still get the documents for which they have applied.

>However, some of the companies charge more than five times the amount that the official websites do.

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

#198

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

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…

On the government side, especially US government side, the solution would be simple:

1. Ban the sites in one way or another.

2. Jail the people who run them, if reachable.

3. Require payment providers to reverse the payments of the last X days once caught.

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

#199

Post by 8note »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #191
techrat wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This stuff needs to be regulated, Regulated? Fraud is illegal. It needs to be PROSECUTED.

The problem is that it's hard to draw a clear line between legitimate consulting, and fraud. If the government forms are byzantine and you go to a lawyer and pay them $250 to fill them for you, you aren't being scammed. If you visit a web site that clearly tells you that it's a third party website, you can waste your time with the horrible government site, or you can pay 10 bucks and use their optimized form, you're…

I'd still think you're being scammed if it takes 250 to fill out a form.

Those companies are scamming you through the government, like they do with taxes

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

#200

Post by 55555 »

dannyw wrote: post #20
ta1234567890 wrote: post #7

And at the same time that Google supposedly can’t catch these guys, they randomly suspend my ads account without even an explanation. And of course no recourse or way of getting in touch with a human.

Maybe you're not spending enough money. I'm sure Google's AI suspension bot doesn't go around suspending their top spenders (account wise), even if it has high confidence there's a breach.

lol I doubt this very much. Facebook randomly banned someone recently who had spent 72 million dollars (?) over a continuous period of 11 years. Google is better but not that much better.

I've spent millions on ads with G and Fb and have never even had a real rep.

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