Google Text Ads For Known Malware Sites

notthatwillsmith writes "We all know that Google purges known 'attack sites' — sites that deliver viruses, spyware, or other malware to visitors — from its index of searchable sites, but that doesn't stop the text ad giant from happily selling ads linking to those sites. One wouldn't think it would be any more difficult to cross-reference the list of purged sites with the list of advertisers than it was for the main search index, would it?" To be fair, the article says that Google shut down the ad when notified of it; and no other examples of linked malware are offered. Was this a one-time oversight?

Comments

give 'em a break

[v1]

To be fair, the article says that Google shut down the ad when notified of it; and no other examples of linked malware are offered. Was this a one-time oversight?

Given the amount of business Google gets, how can you possibly consider one instance anything but an oversight?

This is NOT "stuff that matters"

News flash! Local traffic cop overlooks jaywalker. Corruption, or honest mistake, you decide!

Re:give 'em a break

[Joce640k]

You can't expect them to check every single link on every single page in real time.

I could easily set up a page that waits for a visit from the google page-checker then modifies itself to contain bad stuff. That would give me a window of attack.

Re:give 'em a break

[jorghis]

You guys are missing the point. Its not a matter of humans checking each link and making an oversight. Its a matter of Google accepting ads from sites that its magical filtering system knows for a fact are spam sites/link farms/malware etc. If they didnt accept ads from sites that their database knows to be not so great websites then there wouldnt be any oversight. Computers dont make oversights so the only way this could have happened is if Google decided to apply a different standard for filtering their advertisers than they do to regular webpages.

Re:Notify the end users

[larry bagina]

That might viloate the google/website contract. Howewver, that's not the issue here. Google is running ads with links to malware sites, not ads on the malware sites (though they probably do that too).

Re:Responsibility

[Sir_Dill]

If you bothered to RTFA you would have found out that the authors were only able to cite one example for which Google "ponied up" by removing the offending ad as soon as they were notified. Hell if you bothered to read the summary you would have seen that.

That doesn't sound like a blind eye.

Quit trolling

Furthermore its a fine line between due diligence and big brother. Especially in in today's internet climate. I am not surprised that the group doing the adwords doesn't know enough about the group doing the filtering to be able to filter automatically. Its very easy to say Google should know what Google is doing but we all know that interdepartmental communications in large companies sometimes don't work all that well.

It would be interesting if the bloggers that posted this "poke the big guy piece" had more than just this one incident. It would also be interesting to know how many other sites have been removed. If this was the first and they are now going to be crosschecking, then it shouldn't happen again.

But no one ever clicks on the ads

[Progman3K]

So why worry?
At least this way the malware companies pay someone and end up infecting no one.

Seriously have YOU ever clicked on an ad?

I've put adwords on my site www.gentooxo.org thinking it would help me pay for the site's hosting and the bandwidth I use to distribute my customized-for-olpc linux distro but you know what? According to my stats NO ONE has ever clicked on an ad!
And that's after about two thousand visits to the site and maybe 200 downloads!

Here is my 'required by google' policy on the ads:
http://gentooxo.org/disclaimer.shtml/

So useless are the ads that I am thinking I will simply drop them...

Google doesn't give a damn as long as they're paid

[glindsey]

You want proof? Google for "spybot" or for "adaware" and see how many deceiving pieces of malware are advertised in the sponsored links:

"spybot": 3 sidebar, 1 at the top.
"adaware": 3 at the top
"ad-aware": 1 sidebar, 1 at the top

I'm always sure to tell my friends and relatives the actual URL for Spybot S&D or LavaSoft because of these scamming low-lifes. I've reported them a half-dozen times to Google, gotten an automated response, and never seen a change.