Friday, September 25, 2020

Google is publishing scam ads featuring Dick Smith

I'm getting tired of seeing these scam ads that, if you click through them, take you to fake news pages that look like ABC news reporting that you can make millions in a few weeks with crypto currency.

Presumably Dick Smith isn't happy about this.


If you try to report the ad, there's only a few options to choose from and none really capture what is going on.


It's not just me, there's a Reddit thread here about the problem. Here's another:


It leads to this fake news page:


This page is hosted on a domain registered to Eugenii Ermolenkov at Atarbekova St. Moscow.

I think Google needs to take some responsibility for taking money to advertise scams and to illegally use people's image to add weight to these scams. Obviously there is a bit of a battle going on as recently Dick Smith is being spelt with diacritical marks.

It looks like the advertisers are fighting some sort of detection using Dick Smith's name, perhaps Google needs to use face recognition?






Here's an ad I just saw on a YouTube video:


More variations I just saw.









1 comment:

Outoflane said...

I agree. If Dick Smith can't sue Google about this there is a bigger problem..