[HN Gopher] Ads are impersonating government websites in Google ...
___________________________________________________________________
Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results,
despite ban
Author : atg_abhishek
Score : 450 points
Date : 2021-05-14 03:33 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (themarkup.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (themarkup.org)
| kevinventullo wrote:
| I saw the same thing recently with renewing TSA PreChek. The top
| result is not the government website, but some shady middleman
| which seems to charge 3x to do the same thing (while also
| siphoning your personal information incl. passport number).
|
| It was a bit jarring, I got very far in the process before
| realizing something was off. Made me realize how much trust I was
| implicitly putting into my search engine.
| tyingq wrote:
| 15 hours have passed, and Google hasn't shut it down yet. Hrm.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/AT8F5WC
| ahelwer wrote:
| I 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 chargeback and telling
| their website support that I believed they were misrepresenting
| themselves as the IRS. It really was a "welcome to the real
| world" moment, though - my very first act as a new business in
| the US was to get scammed. This theme has continued. 90% of the
| business mail I get are scams masquerading as official government
| mail to get business licenses or whatever. These websites are run
| by scumbags who should all be arrested. And Google, of course,
| should pay actual penalties because it's been all upside for
| them.
| FriedrichN wrote:
| 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 (grand)parents lose 20K to some scumbag scammers.
| techrat wrote:
| > This stuff needs to be regulated,
|
| Regulated? Fraud is illegal.
|
| It needs to be _PROSECUTED._
| amelius wrote:
| Perhaps if we all start using all-caps, somebody in
| government will hear us. You are right, of course.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Perhaps if we all start using all-caps, somebody in
| government will hear us
|
| YES - THE NAVY
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| 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.
| 8note wrote:
| 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
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| If you ask a _lawyer_ to fill out a form for you, it 's
| going to cost a lot of money. That's not a scam.
|
| But let's not nitpick. The example number for a non-scam
| full-disclosure website was $10. That seems legitimate to
| me.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| How will you prosecute them? Not only most scammers are
| nameless, but most are from countries where government
| needs to fix lot of things before they are effective
| against scammers.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| You prosecute the ad companies that are complicit and
| assist them in their endeavors. The scammer himself might
| be out of reach of US law enforcement, but Google which
| is promoting their scams (and getting paid for it) is
| definitely not.
| notyourday wrote:
| 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 government ( and Cyprus
| banks ) have to make a choice - continue to tolerate
| scammers using their banks and be locked out totally out
| of the US financial system or crack down on the scammers.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Or, you know, punish the platform that allows for these
| scams to happen.
| seoaeu wrote:
| You don't even need to be this severe. The credit card
| system demonstrates how things can work: make the bank
| post collateral and pay a small transaction fee per
| transfer. Refund any fraud victims out of the fees and/or
| by issuing charge backs onward to the bank. If they
| facilitate a lot of fraud, raise their fees. If they
| refuse to pay the fees, seize the collateral and cut them
| off.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| While we are at it, let's also throw 2-3 nukes to the
| country in case they dont fix it.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Well, it wouldn't be nukes but if someone who outed US
| Gov wrongdoing was there, I'm sure the US could force
| down their aircraft or whatever.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| 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
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Hang on, how are robocallers terrorists?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Didn't Lenin say "The purpose of terrorism is to create
| terror?"
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| There are different types of terrorism. It falls under
| the cyberterrorism and critical infrastructure category.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I still don't understand how robocallers are engaging in
| terrorism, or damaging critical infrastructure.
|
| Don't get me wrong; I'd love to see them picking up trash
| on the side of the highway for next twenty years of their
| life, or worse. But calling everything "terrorism" really
| reminds me of the years following 2001.
| techrat wrote:
| You're right. Dunno why you're getting downvoted.
|
| Follow the money and report the issue to the institutions
| along the line. If they refuse to shut down the scammers
| and to stop facilitating their crimes, shut the
| institutions down for being an accessory.
| exporectomy wrote:
| As long as they actually provide the service they're
| advertising, it doesn't sound quite as bad as an actual scam.
| Reselling something at a markup but with better advertising
| is common in commerce. Up to the customer to decide if the
| price is what they're willing to pay. It's only government
| services that have a kind of aura of "don't be a dick" around
| them, maybe because people feel they can trust them not to be
| profit driven.
| nkrisc wrote:
| They're no different than the homeless guys who take free
| newspapers and try to badger you into buying them.
| IncRnd wrote:
| If you don't want your post color to be washed-out,
| remember to post through news.ycombinator.fastposts.com.
| For the regular fastposts small fee, your post will be made
| to HN with the maximum visibility hacker news allows!
| yarcob wrote:
| It's definitely a scam. They do not "provide a service",
| they mislead you into thinking you are dealing with a
| government office and that you are paying an official fee.
|
| This is not "better advertising", it's just a scam.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Some lost _millions_.
| exporectomy wrote:
| In genuine scams, yes. But nobody will accidentally pay
| millions for a business license that's also available for
| free.
| 6510 wrote:
| Ransom should work.
| 6510 wrote:
| You don't have to like it. If the government asks for
| information you cant expect 100% to just say NO.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's true, that's outside of the expected range. But
| confusion of authority is the same principle at this
| level or at a higher one it doesn't really matter. This
| particular context has a low expected value but the same
| principle in another context can cost very large amounts
| of money.
|
| Recently a big dutch retailer got caught out by a small
| thing, a suppliers administrative email got hacked and
| the company as a result wired a couple of million to the
| wrong recipient.
|
| The real problem in this case is that Google has a
| perverse incentive to allow these ads-as-serps.
| Personally I think Google should be named as a co-
| conspirator in fraud cases like these. That would get
| them to clear this up pronto.
| 6510 wrote:
| Some "service" numbers in the Netherlands advertise in
| google by showing a real phone number (for a gov
| institution or a business) that links to their paid
| number. People wait for 10-30 min then are call-forwarded
| to the real number. They may make multiple calls like
| that until the phone bill arrives that lists on average
| "40 euro service numbers" but even then they might not
| see though the scam, even if you see though it is hard to
| not just repeat the mistake. I suspect they steal a
| measured amount of money and time per user as from what I
| hear its always 30-50 euro.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, I've seen those too. I've already alerted OPTA to
| this and have sent multiple messages to Google, nothing
| however has changed so far.
|
| This is a total scam and should be dealt with
| accordingly.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Frankly, I think the "we're just a platform" excuse goes out
| the window when they directly make money from it. If you sell
| an ad, you need to proactively ensure that the ad isn't
| illegal. Full stop.
| joering2 wrote:
| 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).
| fortran77 wrote:
| I had a similar experience but I knew to stop when they asked
| for payment.
|
| I'm well aware that EINs are free, having had about half-a-
| dozen of them for various businesses.
|
| I googled something like IRS EIN and clicked the link. I saw a
| page that looked exactly like the IRS EIN page as I remembered
| it. I filled out my information. When I clicked submit, I saw a
| payment page. It was only then I realized I had been duped and
| looked at the domain.
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| Another common one for new LLCs is threatening, official
| looking letters telling you you need a workplace safety poster
| or you will go to jail/pay monstrous fines.
|
| The law is real but only applies in very specific circumstances
| and the letters come from companies graciously offering to sell
| you overpriced posters.
|
| It freaked the hell out of my partner when we got that, had to
| explain to her at 3AM that we weren't going to lose our
| business over a poster. That kind of stuff really rattles your
| bones when you've got so much going on already with a new
| business.
| ahelwer wrote:
| Oh yes I got that one! It really does work as a sort of DDOS
| attack against new businesses, you're trying to get all this
| stuff sorted out and the scammers know how easy it is to
| sneak in one more form to be filled out & fee paid.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| What really stunned me was that in our state, the official
| website even has a statement letting you know about these
| fraudsters... but apparently they can't actually shut them
| down or stop them from mailing every new LLC? It's incredible
| how ill equipped we are to shut down scammers who have a nice
| downtown Chicago Loop address.
| aidos wrote:
| 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 emails from Instagram about the email address
| change).
|
| As ever, the main issue is that getting through to Instagram to
| get any real help seems impossible. Which sucks, because surely
| changing all the details on an Instagram account should flag
| something on their side.
| raister wrote:
| 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!
| xfer wrote:
| Not sure about facebook, but google used to(no longer use
| them) warn me about location change(SMS and e-mail to
| secondary account).
| jimktrains2 wrote:
| 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.
| raister wrote:
| 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....
| lowercased wrote:
| 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.
| saddlerustle wrote:
| VPNs are pretty mainstream these days. If you talk to
| anyone working on anti-abuse you'd find the answer to
| most "Why don't you just.." ideas is because it'd impact
| many orders of magnitude more legitimate users than
| victims.
| PeterisP wrote:
| I turn on my company VPN and the next minute my network
| connections come from their HQ halfway across the world.
| danaris wrote:
| 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.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| 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.
| max937 wrote:
| Should be able to get that account back unless they stole her
| email as well. Typically the original email is able to
| recover the account and it doesn't matter that the hackers
| changed the email.
| aidos wrote:
| She managed to get it back now. Thanks.
| Sparkyte wrote:
| My personal opinion is that Google should be held liable for
| allowing Ads to do so.
| DistressedDrone wrote:
| > Muldoon didn't respond to a question about why the ads were
| able to violate Google's policy.
|
| I thought it was obvious by now that Google is a money train, and
| no one is watching the tracks. Their main distinctions as a
| Fortune 500 company are avoiding human contact and abandoning
| projects.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Maybe Muldoon just has a policy against returning the calls of
| a full-time anti-Google mouthpiece that is literally funded by
| DuckDuckGo. It really bugs me how HN acts so skeptically about
| most topics but falls hook, line, and sinker for every
| astroturf campaign that comes along.
| Karunamon wrote:
| I too lament HN's complete loss of even the pretense of
| objectivity when it comes to anything Facebook or Google, but
| in this case, as long as the accusations are factual, I think
| there's value in the competition attempting to keep them
| honest.
| bencollier49 wrote:
| I noticed that this is happening in the UK the other day. There
| are firms of lawyers (are they?) creating clones of the free
| Citizen's Advice service and marketing it via Google Ads. Slimy
| stuff.
| dom111 wrote:
| Yeah, the one that caught my Mum recently was a "form filling
| service" for changing your driving license address. It sucks as
| it scams money out of people that probably don't have that much
| in the first place.
|
| Shortly after this she started getting additional scam
| calls/texts too, although this could be entirely unrelated...
| bencollier49 wrote:
| Doubt it - these sorts of companies are very keen on people
| who are known to be susceptible.
| mellavora wrote:
| you mean Republicans?
| kiwijamo wrote:
| Even more reason to switch to other search engines such as
| DuckDuckGo.
| mrweasel wrote:
| I reported the same scammer ad at least five time over a period
| of a month on DuckDuckGo. The ad was impersonating a major
| Danish news site.
|
| This issue isn't restricted to Google. The only main difference
| is that Google run their own ad network. In both cases it show
| how little verification is going on with online ads. If
| anything I believe the ad networks should be held resonsible
| for the ads they push to the end user.
| harles wrote:
| Is DuckDuckGo better at this or just a smaller target people
| ignore? A couple quick searches didn't turn up anything, but
| sure seems like they're vulnerable to the same attack vector.
| daveoc64 wrote:
| I just put "renew driving licence" into DuckDuckGo from the
| UK and there are two ads before the official Government
| website. [0]
|
| There's also a hilarious eBay ad on the side offering driving
| licence renewals!
|
| The first [1] does say several times that it's not the
| official site, but they are charging a PS57.60 fee for
| submitting something that can be done on the Government's
| website for free.
|
| The second [2] is also quite clear that it's unofficial, but
| the price isn't visible, as trying to use the call to action
| button results in an error message.
|
| Putting in "renew driving licence official" results in
| similar ads being shown first.
|
| While it seems these sites aren't doing anything illegal,
| both they and the search engines are profiting from people
| that don't know better.
|
| [0] - https://imgur.com/a/bIlcBvG [1] - https://drivinglicenc
| eshelp.co.uk/apply?msclkid=ec0c69ce50b7... [2] -
| https://drivinglicencerenewalsonline.co.uk/
| jeffbee wrote:
| DuckDuckGo shows me three scams in the ads at the top of the
| page when I search "employer ID number".
| harry8 wrote:
| I got an ad for ebay. followed by 3 results. The ad should
| be more clearly marked but I don't see any scams here.
|
| [1] https://www.thebalancesmb.com/how-to-find-your-
| ein-4768994
|
| [2] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/employer-
| identification...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employer_Identification_N
| umber
| jeffbee wrote:
| I get "Get An IRS EIN Number Here - Online IRS EIN
| Application ein-gov-online.com" and "Employer ID Number
| App - Edit, Sign, Print, Fill Online irs-form-ss-4.com".
|
| On Bing.com I get https://www.irs-tax-ein-number.com,
| https://irs.usa-taxid.com, https://ein-gov-
| online.com/irs-ein/application, and https://www.irs-ein-
| tax-id.com
| harry8 wrote:
| I know there's a small section of people who will defend big
| tech under any and all circumstances but really?
|
| "I'm unsure if the competition have solved this problem that
| I tried and verified they don't have." Just seems like a
| pretty terrible defense of a big tech company that definitely
| hasn't solved that problem that they absolutely do have and
| know it will defraud people.
|
| Remember the old days when google had their ads clearly and
| obviously marked, off to the side of your search results so
| as to minimize the potential for confusing ads with results?
| Yeah they decided there was more money in shaking down people
| to claim top spot when people specifically search for them.
| You search for coke, the top result is pepsi if they pay
| google. Pay google so people get what they search for. Make
| it more likely to click on the paid ad than the search result
| for the exact same thing. People getting ripped off is
| collateral damage, not worth sacrificing shakedown proceeds
| to avoid actively helping fraud. It stinks to high heaven and
| Google employees know this.
|
| "We haven't fixed their grift. That fixing it might impact
| ours is totally unrelated." --Google
| harles wrote:
| DuckDuckGo has this problem as well. I'm not sure what
| switching to a smaller company that does the same thing -
| albeit in a more privacy conscious way - helps. It's not a
| Google problem, it's a search industry problem.
| detaro wrote:
| duckduckgo's ads are not exactly a beacon of quality either, so
| I wouldn't trust them necessarily to not let something like
| this through. Install adblockers for everyone you know.
| kiwijamo wrote:
| Just realised I probably haven't seen DuckDuckGo's ads due to
| my adblocker. The downvotes for my original comment seems
| justified from what I read. Thanks for enlightening me.
| tylerchilds wrote:
| [OC]: http://sanmateogov.org/
| Ayesh wrote:
| Vietnam government is also impersonated in organic results.
|
| Google "Vietnam visa government website", and you will see a
| result from "govt.vn" as the too result. That is not the official
| web site, but neither Vietnamese NIC nor google didn't find a
| problem with it.
| rapht wrote:
| These kinds of articles always boil down to how Google are not
| doing their job properly anymore, be it by presenting results
| that do not include scams, content farms and the like, or by
| systematically pushing ads (including dubious ones) over organic
| results, all in the interest of their ad business.
|
| I'm probably not technical enough, but I'm always left wondering
| how no one created a 'bettergoogle.com' that makes a query to
| google from the client side and applies an array of filters to
| google's output, starting by removing the ads and the results
| from any known bad actors. Could also be a browser extension but
| that makes it difficult on mobile.
| underwater wrote:
| Because Google would sue them out of existence?
| rightbyte wrote:
| If you could sue Google for search ranking Google would go
| bankrupt.
| paxys wrote:
| Reason #11520 for why ad blocking on the internet is an absolute
| necessity.
| amelius wrote:
| We should ban ads already.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Or at least attach proper liability to them. If you promote a
| scam, you're considered complicit and liable for the
| underlying crime.
| Marsymars wrote:
| I've actually moderated a bit over time. One of my favourite
| approaches is a regulatory approach that mandates that if you
| offer a free, ad-supported service, you _must_ offer the
| service ad-free for a price, which is to be limited in
| proportion to what an ad-supported user is worth.
| habosa wrote:
| Clearly these should be banned because they violate Google's
| policy, so I don't argue that.
|
| But on a more general level, I don't really have a problem with
| companies offering to fill out government forms for me in
| exchange for my money.
|
| For instance last year I fought a traffic ticket by myself. It's
| not hard, but you do have to fill out like 3 different forms and
| mail them in. Totally free besides the stamps.
|
| There are many many "ticket fighting" companies which charge you
| $100 to get you out of a ticket. They act like they're lawyers
| but really they just fill these forms out for you. If I had to do
| it again, I'd pay the $100 for the convenience.
|
| How do we decide who is a scam and who is improving the
| experience of interacting with the government? How much friction
| do you have to remove before it's OK to charge?
|
| Clearly the mail forwarding ones are a scam (it's super easy
| through USPS) and, in my opinion, the ticket fighting ones are
| not a scam. So the line is somewhere in between those two poles.
| wccrawford wrote:
| The real ones don't make it look like you're on the official
| site. They clearly lay out what they're doing and why they
| charge what they charge.
|
| It's not a scam if the customer is properly informed of the
| situation.
| Macha wrote:
| I think companies who are legitimately about making the process
| easier can avoid can make that clear in their naming and
| marketing - "Foobar traffic appeals service - We make fighting
| tickets easier, 80% success rate" is hard to mistake for the
| government, while "Traffic Appeals Service, file your traffic
| appeal here" is a lot harder to notice that you're using a
| third party
| hansvm wrote:
| One thing I noticed switching to a custom DNS server on my phone
| is that search ads are a little hard to identify on mobile
| nowadays, and I find myself accidentally clicking them up to a
| few times per week (the mistake is immediately apparent because
| the site won't load).
| easytiger wrote:
| Just wait until you see the Google ads in Africa region. Literal
| scams. No subtlety. Like something from the 90s
| r0m4n0 wrote:
| The 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 expectation is you have to pay
| the USPS so nothing seemed odd... the websites even look almost
| identical. The show was over when I received a notification from
| my Chase that they charged $70 instead.
|
| Chase appears to have caught on before Google though because the
| charge didn't go through
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| 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.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > 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.
|
| For some reason, some people in our government believe that
| the USPS must be run as a business instead of as a service to
| citizens. This is one of the manifestations of that belief.
| Selling your personal information so you get flooded with
| advertisements is one of the most business-like moves I can
| think of.
| notimetorelax wrote:
| They even have a disclaimer below stating that they provide
| more services than USPS but it's so hard to tell if it's flat
| out lie or not.
| sen wrote:
| 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.
| devwastaken wrote:
| U.S. government and friends simply don't care. Sever phone
| lines from outside western countries where law applies - you've
| solved the majority of the problem. Same with disinformation
| campaigns from other countries. Sever their internet. We can
| never prosecute illigal acts conducted outside the west.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Yes, because four million Indian Americans, 2 million
| Americans born in Africa, 5 million Chinese Americans, etc.
| aren't going to mind at all if you sever contact to their
| friends and family.
| knodi123 wrote:
| One of my older relatives searched google for the name of his
| bank, clicked the first link which was an ad for a phishing
| site, and 5 minutes later he was on the phone with some indian
| guy who was using remote desktop to install packages through
| some janky DOS interface. It was probably cleanable, but I just
| wound up formatting his hard drive and reinstalling with some
| really cranked-up adblockers. It was an hours-long hassle, and
| thank god he managed to change his banking passwords and put a
| fraud notice on his credit card, because he had handed all that
| info over.
|
| I couldn't help thinking that that Ad was a lot like a
| locksmith accepting a few bucks to let some burglar into my
| house no questions asked, and then explaining to the cops that
| he's just as much a victim as I am.
| dhimes wrote:
| I _love_ that analogy.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> a locksmith accepting a few bucks to let some burglar into
| my house no questions asked, and then explaining to the cops
| that he 's just as much a victim as I am._
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Locksmith/comments/41ydjn/serious_q.
| ..
| jeffbee wrote:
| Just so we're clear, there are no "sponsored results" on
| Google. There are results, and there are ads. It matters
| because if you lose the distinction you will lose the ability
| to remember what "sponsored results" were. On Yahoo! search,
| _all_ of the results were paid. You paid more for a higher
| position. This dubious service was provided by Overture, and
| every search engine except Google was a customer of Overture 's
| technology. The service that Google provides is specifically
| not paid results placement.
| lstamour wrote:
| Absolutely. Google's making ads look like search results [1],
| but let's bring up an example from the early-to-mid 2000s [2]
| because that's extra relevant here when today's relevant
| search engines put ads confusingly at the top of your search
| results. The ad isn't a "sponsored result" but it's fair to
| say the results are sponsored (and confusingly so).
|
| 1. https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/23/squint-and-youll-click-
| it/
|
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_Media_Native
| jeffbee wrote:
| Regarding #1, did you ever notice how the "dark pattern"
| that article was about got reverted shortly after that,
| except not on DuckDuckGo which still contains that "dark
| pattern"?
| lstamour wrote:
| I heard about it being reverted, but I have seen far too
| many people, myself included, click the links at the top
| thinking they're the first result when they're not. This
| article on ads offering gov services has some great
| examples in it.
|
| Remember when Google highlighted ads in different
| colours? Like the garish pink and green from way back in
| 2001: https://edge45.co.uk/blog/google-adwords-evolution-
| timeline/ (scroll down to see it near the bottom)
|
| Look at how they intentionally tried to differentiate the
| ad from the rest of the search results: large swaths of
| white space separate the top sponsored ads from the rest
| of the search results even in a time when monitors were
| smaller, with clearly different link and background
| colours, etc.
|
| I wonder if anybody's built a browser plugin to provide
| Google search results pages that look like they used to
| back in 2001? ;-)
| sellyme wrote:
| From that article:
|
| > It's hard to imagine what Google looked like without
| ads
|
| ...I'm not too sure on that one, Colin. Not a whole lot
| of imagination required.
| detaro wrote:
| What exactly was reverted? Google search results look
| like the screenshot in that article for me.
| lstamour wrote:
| I believe it was the placement of the favicon in regular
| search results that was reverted because it appeared in
| the same place as the word "Ad" in the ad.
| detaro wrote:
| Hah, my tired brain didn't even clock that consistently
| wasn't there for the actual results. Which I guess also
| says something about it being a clear distinction...
|
| (DDG seems to do it the other way around: results have
| favicons, ads have nothing in that spot. anyways,
| adblocker back on)
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I just searched for "employee identification number" on my
| mobile. The first full screen was ads - identified only by
| the tiny letters "Ad" in the upper left. How is making your
| ads show up first and look almost indistinguishable from
| results anything other than sponsored results? Google may not
| call it that, but I think you'd need to be a current or
| former Google employee to not understand what it is.
| acdha wrote:
| If you search for "employee identification number" the top of
| the page will be an ad which differs from the first search
| result (which requires 2 full screen vertical scrolls to
| reach on an iPhone 11) only for the presence of "ad" in 6px
| type instead of the favicon and replacing the tiny 3 dot menu
| with an i icon.
|
| Now, I'm sure a Google PR person would insist that this tiny
| bit of text is a clear and unambiguous visual distinction but
| they'd be lying to you hoping that you are unfamiliar with
| eye-tracking research showing how little things like that
| matter, not to mention the way Google has trained users not
| to notice by using the smallest icon sizes and progressively
| removing as many visual indicators over the years as they
| think they can get away with.
|
| The fact that people at Google feel the need to claim that
| this is a meaningful distinction tells you that it isn't.
| Nobody at Google got defensive about this back when they
| didn't offer advertisers a way to get the top result because
| it was completely obvious that ads were separate.
| mistermann wrote:
| This being a democracy, and this sort of thing going on for
| well over a decade, it must be "the will of the people".
| vimacs2 wrote:
| 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 to deal with both lobbyists and members of
| the deep state that are already in those lobbyists pockets.
| If you try and go against the will of the state or corporate
| America (not the people, mind you), the CIA and corporate
| media will relentlessly smear you and try to demolish your
| likelihood of re-election. You can also have members of the
| house of representatives with abysmal approval ratings
| actively impede legislation with overwhelming public support.
| Assuming you can somehow overcome these odds, you then have
| to contend with the fact that you have at most 8 years to
| achieve what you need to accomplish before likely having the
| next one in charge try their best to dismantle your
| accomplishments.
|
| Note: some might find it odd that I consider term limits
| evidence of the superficial nature of US democracy. It's
| important to realise the motivation behind the introduction
| of term limits in the first place was following FDR's 3 re-
| elections, Republicans were worried that if they did not
| introduce term limits, they would never get a chance at
| getting elected again. This is because FDR's policies had
| overwhelming support of the people - democrats and
| republicans alike. Of course, what really happened was that
| future Democrat and Republican presidents lacked the backbone
| to resist kowtowing to lobbying and corruption but the damage
| has been done. Anybody seeking to remove term limits would be
| (and not without some justification) accused of trying to
| turn themselves a dictator.
| mistermann wrote:
| And yet despite all its obvious shortcomings, people
| _looooooove_ democracy.
| grayhatter wrote:
| huh?! are you trying to make sense, or just be confusing?
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they're saying that such things should be
| regulated and that is a failure of [USA?] democracy that
| they're not -- seems right to me.
| melomal wrote:
| So this is interesting because right now the search rankings
| are a steaming heap of crud because of what seems like daily
| algo changes.
|
| It's gotten to the point where spam sites with out of date
| articles are now ranking number 1. Yet everyone else is being
| thrown around page 2+. Google is inevitably only concerned
| about Ad spend so this instability of rankings forces you into
| their ad spending machine.
|
| Organic results in the last few months have been a cesspit and
| so by the looks of it we are now in a full stream of shit with
| Google. Ads are scams, organic results are not what they should
| be due to endless 'algo updates'.
|
| What's the solution? I ponder this daily. Without Google and
| Facebook targeting, starting a successful, long lasting
| business just got hard again.
| eloisius wrote:
| Lately I've been wondering if a niche search engine popular
| with hackers and not the general public could run circles
| around Google search results just because scammers and
| content farms wouldn't be incentivized to game it like they
| are Google.
|
| It frustrates me a lot. I don't even know how to find useful
| information online anymore for everyday things like "how hot
| is too hot outside for a cat?" I invariably land on a garbage
| page with paragraph after paragraph of unintelligible keyword
| fluff. I keep thinking that one of the paragraphs will have a
| the content I'm looking for, but more and more I get to the
| end and realized I just scanned a whole page of referral
| links and content that was clearly farmed out to be written
| by someone who either doesn't know English or GPT2 or
| something.
| beprogrammed wrote:
| P2P distributed search, help make it better.
| https://yacy.net
| gundmc wrote:
| > I don't even know how to find useful information online
| anymore for everyday things like "how hot is too hot
| outside for a cat?"
|
| Maybe this wasn't a real example, but searching exactly
| this (quotes not included) returned the answer in a
| knowledge box at the top of the page and the first several
| organic results had the answer very clearly in the text.
| polytely wrote:
| note that you cannot trust the knowledge box, I can't
| recall a specific example but I've seen some wildly wrong
| things in those.
| eloisius wrote:
| I almost never even register the knowledge box at the top
| because I don't _just_ want the answer, I also want at
| least a little context and chance to vet the credibility
| of the answer. In this case it says appropriate internal
| temperatures for cats, but I'm looking for the kind of
| answer my vet would give me if I asked if it's okay to
| leave my cat on the balcony during the summer. I don't
| want to take her temperature. The majority of the links
| on page one repeat the 105 degree internal tidbit so I
| could easily filter them as irrelevant, but they are all
| couched in paragraphs of keyword fluff and narration
| "many cat owners like to let their cats play outdoors
| during the summer months but how sunny is too sunny for
| your furry feline companion blah blah blah"
| subandi wrote:
| The knowledge box can be 100% wrong, I reported a case
| where the shown answer was taken from a pop-quiz site -
| but it wasn't the actual answer, just the first possible
| (and diametrically wrong) of multiples choices for a user
| to click on.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| Yea I'm very curious about this too. Oddly enough, it's
| not the first time I've heard someone on HN complain
| about a search query being hard for Google to answer,
| tried it, and found the answer in the first result (and
| the next half dozen).
| tialaramex wrote:
| Humans are lazy. It would be more effort, after
| constructing their argument, to actually sit down and
| test that the argument passes a basic sense test. So,
| they don't. And most of the people reading (and upvoting
| to signal "I agree") won't either. Why should they? They
| agree with it, there's no sense in fact checking things
| you agree with, right?
|
| You can see this in the recent Google 2FA threads too,
| lots of people were quite sure Google is doing this to
| get their phone numbers. The _facts_ don 't line up with
| that, but who has time for facts? They know they're
| right, and so do the people upvoting. If you point out
| the facts a handful of confused people might agree, yeah,
| what you're saying does seem to match reality, but that's
| no match for the self-assurance of those who haven't
| checked at all.
|
| Much of the time you can get a long way on just lots of
| people believing you, without any basis in reality. But
| Mother Nature couldn't care less what you believe, and
| it's tricky for people who think this way to sense where
| the line will be until they've stepped over it.
|
| Better versions of the (apocryphal) story of King Cnut
| the Great can get this across. The courtiers pretend to
| believe their King's claim to command the sea, but the
| sea of course couldn't give a shit, it's just water, it
| obeys Mother Nature's laws (in this case Gravity via a
| fairly circuitous process causes Tides) but not the whims
| of men.
| gbear605 wrote:
| In this case, you're the courtier of King Cnut. I just
| did the search and the first correct result is the sixth
| and the first five are incorrect, including the seemingly
| definitive answer at the top of the search.
| eloisius wrote:
| Lazy? People who think this way? Mother Nature? Claiming
| to command the sea? I'm just talking about SEO spam.
| zargon wrote:
| When I do that search, neither the knowledge box nor the
| top 3 results answer the question.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Google doesn't care. Just having one FTE proactively
| blacklisting scams would clean up most of the mess. It is
| way easier to clean high ranking scam/SEO sites then to
| make a new one.
|
| But Google are getting money of scams so ...
| stevenicr wrote:
| Interesting to see someone else see this.. I've been noticing
| siilar for some of my sites, but also for other searches -
| recently 'liquid dog nutrition' eg.. so I too get the feeling
| that putting article based stuff front and center they are
| encouraging users to click ads - and for commercial sites to
| pay to play or get shut out.. it's terrible when you have a
| great site on page 3 of google results and see the crap they
| put ahead of you on page one - while shady sites pay to
| advertise there.
|
| more and more like (a worse version) of the yellow pages
| every quarter.
| 7952 wrote:
| Of course the whole point of a search engine is to try and
| surface useful websites and filter out the obvious crap. And
| the objective of an ad is to subvert that process. And even in
| ideal situations they give almost no information to the user
| about what they actually are clicking.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| 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.
| ollybee wrote:
| 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.
| dom111 wrote:
| I just shared with another commenter that this caught my Mum
| recently[0], but a quick search for the same terms "change
| driving license address" doesn't show anything now.
|
| I did report it at the time (and suggest other family members
| to do the same) but from a numerous list of sponsored results
| to now see none is a surprise!
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27151919
| naturalauction wrote:
| I think it's user dependent, I turned off AdBlock and got
| this https://i.imgur.com/hyWlOpJ.png . Only one visible
| result at 100% zoom on a 1920x1080 display.
| Closi wrote:
| My first attempt, "tv license", brings back a form-filling
| service above the real one too.
|
| I think Google has really increased the number of in-search ads
| recently. It used to be that they were obvious and at the
| top/side, now they look like regular results and often fill up
| the whole first page. IMO they know they are dominant enough in
| the market now that they can get away with providing garbage
| results for some short term profit, and will just dial it back
| if viable competitors come along to stop anyone else entering
| the market.
| naturalauction wrote:
| I tried driving licence (at least the ones who popped up for
| me made it very clear they aren't government affiliated) and
| national insurance number. The national insurance one was
| pretty much an outright scam.
|
| It took me to https://nino.org.uk/ which claims "All
| employers and universities in the UK will require you to have
| this number so apply for your NI Number NOW." That is a total
| lie - if you don't work during your time as a student you
| don't need the number at all. You can work without a national
| insurance number, you just will may pay a higher tax rate
| until you get your national insurance number when you'll get
| a refund. It only says all the way at the bottom that they
| are not affiliated with the government.
| Closi wrote:
| The ad is gone now - I wonder if Google is reading this
| thread and closing them down?
| josefx wrote:
| > and will just dial it back if viable competitors come along
|
| Sure, once those find a way around Googles licensing crime
| against free and open markets built on top of Android and
| Google Play. Don't have to compete as default search engine
| provider if hardware providers are prohibited from changing
| the default.
| eloisius wrote:
| Probably not as lucrative as targeting Americans. I've noticed
| a nice side affect of living in Taiwan to be that there is
| generally less trash to sift through when looking for this kind
| of stuff. Spammers just don't target us as much.
| xfz wrote:
| They still pop up in the UK like a rash that won't go away.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/jun/16/once-again-cop...
| open-source-ux wrote:
| " _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 PS49.99.
|
| >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.
| andylynch wrote:
| I was going to say there used to be (home office applications
| come to mind), but searching for something like 'SORN' still
| returns 5 scammy ads above the real page you need (but the more
| common V5C doesn't. I do think gov.uk has improved this
| compared to the past. I also noticed the uk govt is running
| google ads for some keywords themselves.
| pizzaknife wrote:
| Where does H&R Block and other tax prep services fall into this?
| Arent they (more or less) simply collecting a fee for handling
| otherwise "free" processes provided by the state and federal
| governments?
|
| Not suggesting these nefarious actors, who rely on ignorance of
| the consumer, arent a problem
| sjg007 wrote:
| They don't mislead customers saying that they are the IRS. I
| view my CPA as a domain expert anyway so while I could do my
| own taxes and have done so in the past.. but I agree the IRS
| already basically knows everything.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Tax prep services have taken this game plan and gone major
| league by lobbying the government to prevent free, simple tax
| filing: https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-
| be-fre...
| black6 wrote:
| Google, Mozilla, et alia have trained people to not enter
| "www.whitehouse.gov" into the combined search/url bar, but simply
| "white house", and then to click on one of the links that shows
| up in search results, because this behavior increases clicks on
| their ads. It's shameful. Businesses used to list the URL for
| their company website. Now it's "find us on facebag!"
| hansvm wrote:
| To be fair, I'm more likely to get the official site in the
| presence of a typo via a search engine. In the case of .gov it
| doesn't matter as much since it's a tiny bit difficult to spoof
| them, but typo squatters are a problem for the rest of the web.
| dcdc123 wrote:
| 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.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| 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.
| treesprite82 wrote:
| I believe it's Taboola, Outbrain, and Revcontent (possibly
| more since I last checked).
|
| https://i.imgur.com/1OGHbAW.png
| https://i.imgur.com/4r7PAl7.png
|
| (some slightly NSFW content in these example images:)
|
| https://i.imgur.com/ZF9G7fZ.png
| https://i.imgur.com/hkkvuXd.png
| https://i.imgur.com/1N2o3QT.png
|
| uBlock Origin with Firefox is definitely the way to go now:
| https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-
| works-b...
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Always block all ads. Make absolutely no exceptions. There is no
| reason to feel guilty about doing this.
| vimacs2 wrote:
| Absolutely. I consider unsolicited ads a form of violence and
| laugh at anybody who even tries to shame me into watching any
| of them. As for the accusation of effectively stealing content
| via refusing to allow for their (shitty) form of monetisation,
| unless in the rare case that a company is a workers
| cooperative, I don't want to hear any bullshit about robbery
| when you are purposely extracting surplus value out of your
| workers without democratic agency or fair compensation.
| tantalor wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
| Marsymars wrote:
| Well there are a few ways to think of that.
|
| If you consider the cognitive load of people as the limited
| resource, ad displayers showing ads in their own self-
| interest are acting against the common good.
| stevenicr wrote:
| I saw similar happen to my mom a few years back.
|
| She googled something like 'mail new social security card' -
| clicked the first result and started entering information.
|
| About 4 screens in she asked me to look at it - and we could both
| tell that it was likely not an official gov site at that point.
|
| was first result in google so she trusted it - it looked similar
| enough to a gov site to go with the easy onboarding flow.. a few
| details like name and addy - then submit - next screen a few more
| bits of info.. submit next screen - real gold like maiden name,
| name of dog, - they already captured the social on the first
| screen..
|
| some months later the irs is telling her she needs a pin code and
| that her identity appears to be hacked or whatever.. no surprise.
|
| I long for the day when the faint piss-yellow box surrounded paid
| listings.. the engineers that came up with that perfect yellow
| that may show on a good desktop monitor / and in a presentation
| to the ftc/cpb/congress - whatever.. yet faded out on a laptop
| screen - and when the sun hits.. and yet as great as that was at
| being essentially invisible to most users - they still did away
| it - lets assume because it caused more clicks.. a/b testing and
| all the s valley bs.
|
| I had forgotten about that incident until I saw this headline -
| might be time enough to still ad a note about this on a reply to
| a different HN article a week ago - where someone said "I've
| never seen any evidence of anyone hurt by the large scale
| collection of personal data by Google and FB." - (
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27064382 )
|
| ( Part of the discussion in regards to the article Why I Work on
| Ads - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27060898 )
|
| This is indeed another good example of damage done by the ad
| selling overlords.
|
| Now remembering stopping people from clicking the 'first result'
| for "flash player" - on so many devices, so many times - that ad
| was a two click malware install - of course it was a paid ad -
| sigh - people just don't know and google's been exploiting that
| for a long time.
| ta1234567890 wrote:
| 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.
| dannyw wrote:
| 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.
| ta1234567890 wrote:
| You are spot on. In fact my account had been inactive for
| almost a year when I got the suspension notice.
|
| Also, while active, I stopped accepting any of their
| automatic "improvement" suggestions, as they inevitably lead
| to increase spending, but almost never to better conversion.
|
| If I ever need to advertise with Google again, I'll probably
| need to go through an agency and pay quite a bit extra.
| 55555 wrote:
| 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.
| raister wrote:
| What's ironically is that the ads were paid with scam money, so
| it's like Google is in fact, part of the 'gang'... Crazy world!
| Most part of scams register names that looks like something
| legit, but, of course, no one seems to care who's buying what
| they're buying when registering domain names.
| Joeri wrote:
| Google should commit to donating all funds received from ads
| that are later detected as scams to charity.
| Larrikin wrote:
| In the case described in the article of government
| impersonation, I'd prefer a 10x fine.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Shouldn't companies actively aiding fraud to the the tune
| of, I expect, $Billions have their executives go to jail
| and the company garnished of at least some percentage
| points of global revenue?
|
| Taking money to put fraudulent ads above legitimate results
| seems like it's not doing the minimum due diligence to
| skirt around a willful negligence accusation.
| [deleted]
| bostik wrote:
| Not good enough. They still make money off of the ads the
| affected agencies have to push out to inform users about the
| fraud problem.
|
| Few things are more profitable than selling both the poison
| and the cure.
| josefx wrote:
| That implies that Google has a right to money it makes from
| scams. Next up: Driver of getaway car gets to keep his share
| from robbery, will donate $10 to security guards widow.
| namibj wrote:
| No, it's separate. They donate whatever they received,
| without impact on their other obligations, like refunding
| victims or so.
| josefx wrote:
| > like refunding victims or so.
|
| So how much do you pay for your ability to click on
| phishing links? Is it $0? Guess Google doesn't have to
| refund you anything and gets to keep all that money the
| scammers paid it!
| twirlock wrote:
| >centralizes everything >is still useless >basically centralizes
| everything so it can become useless
| jacquesm wrote:
| This is what you get when search engines and advertising
| companies are one and the same. The only reason this happens is
| because the search unit has prioritized ads and google ad revenue
| generating results.
| kabdib wrote:
| I was looking at health insurance in WA state, and the sites that
| imitate the official government site do a pretty good job at
| everything except having decent, non-scammy insurance offerings.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| 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.
| kordlessagain wrote:
| Ads are a toxic and cancerous model. They need to be banned,
| regulated or competed out of business.
| tiagobraw wrote:
| I hate that there is no easy way to block or report a bad ad on
| google... don't like that 30 minute ad in a 5 minutes video? too
| bad... don't like that adult content ad on the middle of your
| daughter video? too bad.. not that you can use a different
| platform anyway
| [deleted]
| aitchnyu wrote:
| Pet idea. All ads must lead to landing pages which lists name and
| address of ad broker, buyer, what the product is supposed to do
| and option to flag. Lots of people can't tell whats ad and whats
| content. Won't happen voluntarily, when Youtube ads directly
| leads to Play Store.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| PSA: https://sec.report/ is not the URL for the SEC EDGAR
| database which is actually located here:
| https://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html
| doggodaddo78 wrote:
| I'm waiting for AI email with phone bots in concert to commit
| automated identity theft and Medicare fraud.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| 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 of ads.
|
| Stricter KYC (Know Your Customer) could be required to run online
| adverts is another solution.
|
| Pre covid I got pitched a grade 7/6 (v senior O-6 /GS15 ) job for
| the DWP to sort out the technical seo side. Looking at these scam
| sites in search would have been a priority had that gone anywhere
| - maybe set up some meetings with Matt Cutts and discuss a joint
| us / uk approach.
|
| Maybe I should follow that job up.
| tacticalDonut wrote:
| I've tried pitching similar roles in Government on the DoD side
| of the house for knowledge workers like Software Dev and Data
| Scientists.
|
| It's hard to get traction though when the folks making the
| decisions feel threatened that a 25 year old is going to be
| making the same as them and be the same "rank".
|
| I think part of the solution needs to be creating it on a
| separate scale than GS, similar to an SL or ST position, but
| geared specifically towards knowledge workers. That's a
| solution that would probably require congressional involvement
| though...
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Probably not going to work for 25 year old junior developers
| at the more senior levels you need to be aware of the
| political side.
|
| But its is a problem your not going to attract many B+
| candidates if your so far behind industry.
|
| About 3 years ago one uk org (I wont say which one) tried
| pitching people on linked in I got the pitch and so did a
| mate who's ex military he laughed and said "not on those
| poverty wages"
| tacticalDonut wrote:
| Yeah, the problem is that the US Government is trying to
| hire developers in at GS11 positions (~$72k salary in high
| cost of living area).
|
| Never going to get good junior devs at that price point.
| Don't get me started on security clearance requirements in
| addition to low wages...
|
| The fix is to provide competitive wages, but the politics
| of it is difficult.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| 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.
| insta_anon wrote:
| I have a hard time trying to understand why governments don't
| address these scams more proactively.
|
| There is a related issue when you register a new company here in
| Germany: As soon as the new entity is added to the company house
| (called "Handelsregister"), you will start to receive fake
| invoices from scam companies.
|
| These invoice look _very_ similar to official ones and some even
| use the official seal of the state (see
| https://www.firma.de/en/company-formation/beware-of-fake-han...
| for examples).
|
| If you don't pay close attention you can easily mistake these
| invoice for official ones.
|
| This scam is quite well-known and has been going on for years. To
| further add to the insult - the companies that send these fake
| invoices are usually German entities as well, not some obscure
| shell companies in remote islands and yet besides warnings from
| the government it seems that little is happening.
|
| I find it infuriating and don't understand why it is even allowed
| to send another party that you never had any relation with an
| invoice for a service that you actually haven't performed yet.
| varispeed wrote:
| My theory is that since those crimes are non violent, there is
| a silent approval, as long as there is no massive public
| outrage and associated PR costs for a government. The reasoning
| is that the cost to the society is lower than if you were going
| to process those people through legal system and then keep them
| in jail.
|
| If these crimes were costing the society more than keeping
| perpetrators locked up then situation would have changed.
| Another reason is that some people, by their nature, just
| cannot have a "normal" job and so they hustle. If you take away
| non-violent options, then there is a chance they'd turn to
| something violent to achieve their goals and that would be
| costly.
| minikites wrote:
| Why is this the job of the government and not Google for
| sending people to the wrong site? They have a massive
| responsibility in their role as the directory for the internet
| and they need to take it seriously.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Because the government doesn't have an economic incentive
| dealing with small fraud.
|
| That's not what decides elections. If there is too much crime
| that can be an extra excuse to raise more taxes.
|
| I reported frauds to the police in two cases and they didn't do
| anything despite having all the evidence and location of the
| perpetrators (even after arresting one of them in one case).
|
| A civil case didn't work as well because they owned nothing on
| paper.
|
| The only way to get justice is to pay someone to break their
| knees or steal what they stole from you from them.
| bluGill wrote:
| That invoice scam is why big companies have such complex
| expense report systems. They need to verify every transaction
| is real so they can match up real invoices to. I'm more or less
| trusted to buy $5000 worth of stuff at a time (number is
| somewhat random, but this covers most travel expense). However
| they still need to check because if they just pay all bills
| someone will send a bill in my name (easy to find out a name of
| someone who works for a company - my name would be chance, but
| likely enough) even though I didn't buy anything in the
| companies name.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| There's a similar scam in place in Poland, and its continued
| existence confuses me too. I don't remember getting any
| _invoices_ after registering my company, but I got spammed with
| letters telling me to pay a fee to register my company on some
| listing, and some of those messages did their best to make it
| seem they 're a continuation of the official process. The
| deception goes as far as these companies being _named_ in a way
| that sounds government-ish, and their addresses being at the
| same street in Warsaw (the capital) some government buildings
| are.
|
| The infuriating part is that it's so well-known, that both the
| physical government offices and the online forms where you can
| register your small business, are _plastered_ with big,
| attention-grabbing reminders that the registration process is
| free. The government _knows_ about this scam to the point of
| warning people about it, and yet it continues.
| nneonneo wrote:
| Well, the FTC is _trying_, at least. They took action against
| On Point Global (https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-
| proceedings/x130054/po...) which operated a big network of DMV-
| lookalike sites. If you tried to Google for renewing your
| drivers license, you'd get sent to one of these sites, which
| looked like it would help you renew your license but would
| actually just charge you approx. $15 to download a PDF guide on
| how to use the real government website.
|
| There's a certain threshold of complaints, unfortunately. The
| FTC only has the resources to go after big fish. But, one thing
| I did learn from reading the FTC complaint is that credit card
| chargebacks do work, after a fashion; the company was getting
| repeatedly booted off of merchant accounts for accruing lots of
| chargebacks. I bet if people aggressively charged back the EIN
| scammers it'd end up hurting them too.
| bambax wrote:
| Having used some kind of adblocking, on all devices, for as long
| as I can remember, I realize I live in an alternate universe
| where all these scams don't exist [0].
|
| If at some point adblocking is defeated I'm up for a very
| difficult crash landing into reality.
|
| [0]: almost; top results can be scams of course; but it's rare.
| [deleted]
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yeah the internet is completely different without blockers. I
| install uBlock Origin on every browser I come across and I've
| gotten random comments from other users about how everything
| just seems better for some reason. Firefox supports uBlock
| Origin on mobile too, people love it when they try it out and
| find that there's no idiotic YouTube ads anymore.
|
| Firefox should just ship uBlock Origin by default and make it
| the default experience. Brave browser is already doing that.
| iaml wrote:
| They actually have firefox focus app with integrated adblock,
| at least on apple devices.
| pawsforapplase wrote:
| "Firefox" on iOS is just a WebKit reskin; Apple forbids
| 3rd-party browsers.
|
| Mozilla does their best with Firefox Focus (which is also a
| "Safari Content Blocker"), but you cannot use normal
| Firefox extensions on iOS, including ad and script
| blockers.
|
| I was extremely frustrated to buy an iPhone for privacy,
| only to find that there is no way to selectively block
| javascript! They only provide a coarse toggle with Safari.
| blfr wrote:
| For YouTube on mobile, you can get ad-free experience with
| their premium tier[1] or YouTube Vanced[2]. Both come
| complete with background playback and overlay player.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/premium
|
| [2] https://vancedapp.com/
| Marsymars wrote:
| YouTube Premium makes sense if you're a heavy user of
| YouTube, but at my level of use, it would make more sense
| to have a $1-per-video pay-as-you-go model. Or a $5/day
| pass that doesn't renew would be good too.
| yusi-san wrote:
| Or on Android you can install NewPipe[0] which is an open
| source YouTube frond-end without ads too. You can install
| it from F-Droid[1] or Github releases[2].
|
| [0] : https://newpipe.net/ [1] :
| https://f-droid.org/packages/org.schabi.newpipe/ [2] :
| https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/releases
| RussianCow wrote:
| 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.
| zuppy wrote:
| there are adblockers for ios too, for example here's a good
| one: https://1blocker.com
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| Safari only though
| stephen_g wrote:
| 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)...
| pawsforapplase wrote:
| 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 like to just resell the phone.
| But on the social side of things, having a number with
| blue chat bubbles is a depressingly effective status
| symbol, and Apple is better about in-app tracking.
|
| It's getting hard to ignore how harmful the duopoly in
| phone operating systems is to consumers. Carrying two
| phones around is not a tenable solution.
| vxNsr wrote:
| 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.
| mullingitover wrote:
| Ehh, I'm a pretty die-hard iOS person but ad blocking on
| iOS is a steaming pile of BS, to put it mildly. They flat-
| out don't work for 99% of ads. They're not ad blockers,
| they're domain filters, nothing more than a big hosts file,
| and they block absolutely nothing at the page/element
| level. The ad industry runs circles around 'ad blockers' on
| iOS.
|
| The lack of functioning ad blocking is by far the biggest
| downside to iOS, and the same reason that I pity the
| engineers who put all that work on desktop Safari only to
| have it rendered worthless by their lack of ad blocking.
| vxNsr wrote:
| 1Blocker is amazing and absolutely isn't just a domain
| blocker. I'd check it out if I were you.
| evgen wrote:
| Simply not true. I have been using Firefox Focus and
| 1Blocker on iOS for years and ads are not significantly
| more noticeable than on desktop Firefox with uBlock
| Origin. I think you quite misinformed on this subject.
| Marsymars wrote:
| It depends on your level of blocking. I use 1Blocker and
| uBlock Origin, and find maximum blocking with 1Blocker to
| be roughly equivalent in blocking to the default "Easy
| mode" in uBlock Origin. "Medium mode" (combined with a
| few additional lists, e.g. cookie nag lists) in uBlock
| Origin blocks dramatically more crud.
| aikinai wrote:
| > They're not ad blockers, they're domain filters,
| nothing more than a big hosts file, and they block
| absolutely nothing at the page/element level.
|
| I don't think this is true. I use 1Blocker and it seems
| to have tons of element-based rules. You can also create
| your own element-based rules easily with the Safari share
| extension. You tap the element you want to remove, tap
| buttons to go up or down the DOM to make sure you hit the
| right level, and then add it to your blocklist.
| jjbinx007 wrote:
| I've been thinking of screen recording some web browsing on
| my desktop and phone without an ad blocker just to record for
| posterity how truly awful the modem web is without an ad
| blocker.
|
| I can't even read most news websites these days because the
| ads are so utterly distracting and awful.
| asdff wrote:
| I've pretty much stopped browsing the web on my iPhone at
| all. The mobile web is broken. With all the banner ads and
| videos popping up, My 6 inch long phone is reduced to about 1
| inch of readable text. It's like the 2000s again with the
| adspam, or maybe its always been like this and I've just been
| using an ad blocker this entire time.
| aikinai wrote:
| iPhone has supported ad-blocking for six years.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Sounds like they need to work on their UX then because if
| people here aren't getting it working then it seems likely
| that most of their users aren't able to. Is it a default
| installed plugin in Safari?
| aikinai wrote:
| I think the only way anyone would not find it would be
| assuming it doesn't exist. If you search on the web, App
| Store, iPhone search box, etc. you'll find it right away.
|
| And the answer is, it's not installed by default, but
| there are a variety of third-party plugins available in
| the App Store.
| pawsforapplase wrote:
| I spent days trying to set up effective ad blocking on
| iOS.
|
| There is a firehouse of options in the app store, but you
| need to sift through conflicting reports about which ones
| are "still good" - the prevailing recommendations seemed
| to change every 6 months or so when I researched which
| ones to try.
|
| When you do find some that seem worthwhile, the paid
| tiers are often expensive, and they will not work as well
| as the free browser extensions on every other platform.
|
| And there is no replacement for NoScript at any price.
| RussianCow wrote:
| 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.
| bozzcl wrote:
| I'm using a combo of AdGuard and MalwareBytes on Safari, and
| Pi-Hole via Wireguard and my browsing experience has been
| pretty smooth.
| PostThisTooFast wrote:
| Google is full of shit. Remember when they pledged to "punish"
| sites that weren't "mobile-friendly," but then DISABLED ZOOMING
| on their own mobile site?
|
| "You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks."
|
| Why don't you FUCK OFF, Hacker News? Once per hour is "too fast?"
| What a bunch of pompous fucking pricks. Our time isn't free,
| assholes.
| dehrmann wrote:
| 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.
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