Fake News Scam Sites Advertising On Real News Sites

Virtual_Raider writes "Wired is running a story about a new twist in the never-ending quest to prove P. T. Barnum's adage. Old: Scammers are creating fake news sites that look almost like the real thing. New: They are advertising on real news sites, making it difficult for unwary readers to catch on they are being duped with fake coverage of get-rich-quick scams. Among those running the scam 'news' ads are the Huffington Post and Salon. From the article: 'The story has art, it has a sidebar, there's weather, supposed reader comments — even ads. Steadman is described as "a mother from San Francisco" — at least, when I read the article. Thanks to cutting-edge reporting techniques perfected by News 5, she will automatically move to the geolocation of your internet IP address when you read it. Look, she lives right in your neighborhood!'" Forbes also wrote about the scam news sites a couple of weeks back.

Comments

Yeah, they're all claiming Michael Jackson died...

[kclittle]

... just to get you to click thru

ABC Should Crack Down

[eldavojohn]

Intriguing article. I like the ad that uses Barbara Walters' photo and claims

Barbara talks about the "Miracle Pill" known as Resveratrol

Notice they didn't user her last name. But they use her image and the abc News logo ... their domain name is hilarious, news3news.com (looks like newsnews and 3news were taken, ha) which leads one to the registrant residing at:

PO Box 12068
George Town, Grand Cayman KY1-1010

P.O. Box in the Cayman Islands. Imagine that. They don't even bother to use domainsbyproxy or a similar service like most of the other domains listed in this Wired story.

Selling questionable meds is probably pretty hard to prosecute ... but using abc's logo and Walters' image for advertising is definitely prosecution worthy. I hope some of these companies go after this scum.

Re:ABC Should Crack Down

[Deekin_Scalesinger]

I looked into the google money tree scam a few weeks ago after my girlfriend got a cellphone text message from a suspicious (and non requested) source trying to get her to sign up for it. She is not tech savvy, but she knows when something smells fishy. Unfortunately, it looks like a lot of people who are not tech or street savvy have gotten pulled into this scam, being charged 80 dollars a month for freely available information and having a difficult (practically impossible) time canceling the service, let alone getting their money back.

The only out the shadow company has is in their fine print, as always - even that is obscured as some of the shell sites have a timer running on their T&C page - it redirects you back to the entry page shortly after you start top read the T&Cs. Of course the rates are listed at the bottom of the page. Using noscript will allow you to view them at your leisure, but how many average Americans are using noscript and researching this in the first place?

A shame really - just one more example of how P.T Barnum was right, but also more disgusting is how some folks are willing to dup others out of their cash.

Re:ABC Should Crack Down

[tb3]

I think the crackdown should be on Visa and Mastercard. Think about it; it's illegal to receive stolen goods, or sell stolen property, but the credit card companies are acting as intermediaries for these crooks. And, oh yeah, taking a cut (something like 3 - 5%). If the credit card companies had to take more responsibility for who they granted merchant accounts, under penalty of law, I'll bet these fraudsters would find it a lot harder to operate.

Re:ABC Should Crack Down

[paazin]

I think the crackdown should be on Visa and Mastercard. Think about it; it's illegal to receive stolen goods, or sell stolen property, but the credit card companies are acting as intermediaries for these crooks. And, oh yeah, taking a cut (something like 3 - 5%). If the credit card companies had to take more responsibility for who they granted merchant accounts, under penalty of law, I'll bet these fraudsters would find it a lot harder to operate.

Interesting idea and it seems like it'd have some worth - but considering the power of these industries, it's pretty much just a pipe dream as they won't allow congresscritters to do that.

Re:ABC Should Crack Down

[PeanutButterBreath]

I'd love to see more prosecution of fraud, but the problem with going after banks, credit card service providers etc. is that it will raise prices and limit selection for legitimate products and services.

If the alternative is that idiots get screwed trying to get rich, healthy or "confident" quick, I know which strikes me as the lesser evil.

Re:ABC Should Crack Down

[Ironica]

I think the crackdown should be on Visa and Mastercard. Think about it; it's illegal to receive stolen goods, or sell stolen property, but the credit card companies are acting as intermediaries for these crooks. And, oh yeah, taking a cut (something like 3 - 5%). If the credit card companies had to take more responsibility for who they granted merchant accounts, under penalty of law, I'll bet these fraudsters would find it a lot harder to operate.

Interesting thought. How, though, are the CC companies supposed to judge who is a legitimate business and who is committing fraud? What procedures would you have them put in place? What is their burden to examine their customers' business practices? What rights do they have to terminate a merchant account based on what kind of business they conduct? Would merchants have reciprocal rights protecting them from wrongful termination? What would be the limits on the CC company's liability for loss of business if they terminate a legitimate account by mistake?

It might be more feasible to give CC companies the responsibility to forward complaints of fraud to the appropriate authorities. Maybe if someone challenges a charge, they can ask that person if they would like to file a fraud investigation request. That request would include authorization for the CC company to turn over that particular customer's records of transactions with that particular merchant to appropriate law enforcement officials for investigative purposes. Then they'd have sort of a "mandated reporter" status, where if they don't pass on the information to the authorities, they could be held liable, but they are not *themselves* responsible for enforcing law.

What news sites is it showing up on?

[Attila Dimedici]

The summary could at least tell us what news sites it is showing up on. Huffington Post and Salon are almost as reliable as The Onion.

Re:What news sites is it showing up on?

[geekoid]

Now what did the Onion do to deserve being listed with HuffPo~

Re:What news sites is it showing up on?

[mh1997]

The summary could at least tell us what news sites it is showing up on. Huffington Post and Salon are almost as reliable as The Onion. I smell another "Conservative" idiot who can't distinguish between news and editorial, and is thus enraged by "Liberal" news and gratified by "Fair and Balanced" news.

I smell an even bigger "liberal" idiot that does not have a sense of humor.

The funny thing is, is that most of the complaining about Fox News is by people that can't distinguish between news and editorial/entertainment programs. Hannity is not news, O'Reilly is not news, that blond chick with the low cut blouse and high cut skirt reading a teleprompter - that's news.

Re:What news sites is it showing up on?

[rohan972]

...when it comes to genuinely smart people, they tend to be what Americans label as "liberal", and the rest of the world would call centrists or centre-left. There are intelligent people who are on the right, but they tend to use their smarts for business or personal gain, and as they benefit from their actions they fail to acknowledge the downsides of their actions. No doubt they recognise the downsides, but admitting it would probably be a death sentence for them or the businesses they run.

The policies of the left centre around collective control, that control being exercised by the educated. The genuinely smart liberals stand to benefit from their proposed policies every bit as much as the intelligent people on the right.

Nevertheless, wealth and education both tend to naturally increase the opportunity for the possessor, regardless of politics (unless you get a Pol Pot going around executing the rich and educated). Personally, I don't think the conservative/liberal dichotomy is an issue of intelligence so much as it is an issue of values, particularly perception of risk. As an example, I prefer the independence of being a contractor rather than the subservience of being an employee. Others prefer the lowered risk of being an employee. That doesn't mean I think an employee has to be unintelligent, but it seems to me that business owners and contractors tend towards more conservative politics, employees to more liberal politics.

Compulsory schooling and widespread employment (as contrasted to self-employment) ensure that a large proportion of the population are accustomed to living under someone else's orders. Possibly as a result, they are more comfortable with social solutions implemented by compulsion, such as nationalised health care. Perhaps I'm wrong about this, but as a conservative, I favour a system that promotes personal business ownership over large corporations for two main reasons: one, as you say, big corporations often screw the people and two, too many big corporations means a shift towards left wing compulsion politics due to the higher proportion of employees in the population.

Real News?

[Bigby]

What site brings real news? (except Slashdot, of course)

We are all traveling...

[wrekd]

We are all traveling on the disinformation superhighway.

Fake news site

[MyLongNickName]

I got redirected to an obviously fake news site.

Old news.

[SatanicPuppy]

Newspapers run similar ads (with a tiny "Paid Advertisment" banner on the top) and I've heard of TV stations doing the same thing with "Fake Newscasts" but that's usually more common during election years.

Re:Old news.

[DriedClexler]

Yeah, and back in 2004, some anti-Bush spammers bought long ads on CBS deliberately designed to look like real CBS news, even including a doctored video made to look like Dan Rather presenting documents proving Bush skipped out on his National Guard service.

What's funny is, they didn't even bother to make the documents look realistic.

Why CBS even approved the "ads", I have no idea.

Re:You almost got me...

[Freetardo Jones]

You thought something posted by kdawson was a real article? You must be new here.

Barnum

[Deadstick]

the never-ending quest to prove P. T. Barnum's adage

I'll give the author a pass on the libelous misattribution, and just point out that Barnum did not take your savings or your mom's Social Security check. He promoted a lot of hokum, but he took your fifty cents and sent you home satisfied.

And he brought us Jenny Lind...

rj

Re:Barnum

[Deadstick]

The misattribution occurred during his lifetime.

rj

they are even moding the story for other countries

[petermgreen]

I get

"Mary, a mother from Crowborough, E2 is thriving"

Re:Yeah, they're all claiming Michael Jackson died

[Abreu]

And we all know he's undead... Like in the movie Death Becomes Her, Jacko has been touching himself up with latex and paint for years...

Here is how it works

[Anonymous Coward]

For those wondering how these advertisers make money here is the basic rundown.

1. They pitch you the product with a news site as mentioned above or a flog (fake blog) posing as a midwestern housewife giving a legitmate review of the product. Unauthorized endorsements by Ophrah and Barbra Walters are also popular.

2. Rebills, you pay the $2.00 you think it costs to buy the product. Turns out that's only for the 15 day free trial and so they can get your credit card. If you don't call them and cancel within that time they will charge another $100/month or so to get the product shipped to your house ever month. They bury this fact in a page long terms and conditions no one ever reads.

3. Acai, Resveratrol, Colon Cleanse, bizops (get rich quick), Google Money Tree and the like are popular products.

4. Most of the people doing this aren't big companies, but affiliate marketers who get a substantial cut every time they refer a sale.

5. Thankfully the FTC and state attorney generals are trying to crack down on this sort of thing.

Served by Pulse 360

[ntsucks]

For your amusement, here is another one that is running: http://the-daily-tribune.com/breaking/13/?t202id=4693&t202kw=6417707

I see a ton of these ads served by a company called Pulse 360.

You know how I know it's fake?

[Anonymous Coward]

The comments down at the bottom are all spelled correctly and using proper grammer.

"ideas like effective government action"

[smittyoneeach]

Wow, that beats "vegan haggis" for oxymoron of the day.

Re:Yeah, they're all claiming Michael Jackson died

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure he had been touching himself with latex, but not in the manner in which you stated...

Oh Come On

[castorvx]

Fox has to get traffic somehow.

Since when

[Anonymous Coward]

is The Huffington Post consider a "news" site?

If I want to listen to idiots foaming at the mouth and blaming all the world's problems on a President who's been out of office for almost six months, I'll turn on MSNBC.

Wishing Well And Such

[tholomyes]

"Sometimes the thing that you think isn't a scam, is a scam, and the thing that you think is a scam, isn't a scam at all. And sometimes that, itself, is the scam! So as you can see, things can be pretty tricky out there for consumers."

"And for reporters!"

Google and Slashdot Should Crack Down

[tomhudson]

Recently both Google and slashdot have been running ads for "you can make 11,668.00 from home" lately. The ads are served up by google to sites like slashdot, and it's the same modus operandi: Ask you for $2 for information, then bill you $70 to $90/month for a "subscription" you supposedly agreed to.

For search pages, google can argue that it's just conveying information for free. For ads it serves, google has no such safe harbour - it's a for-profit business, and they really should crack down on these obvious scams.

Actually the spammers have already started that

[billstewart]

Haven't got my first one of them yet, but the news reports have been saying that Twitter, Youtube, and ITunes have been getting swamped with Jacko traffic, and spammers have already started firing out scams, probably "Click here to install the video player so you can see Michael Jackson video" etc.

Re:Actually the spammers have already started that

[cheftw]

Thanks for the info, just started this 3 weeks ago. I've gotten 2 checks for a total of $1900, pretty cooll.

Kinda funny if you live someplace remote...

[keysdisease]

It was pretty easy for me to spot these... cause I live the FL Keys and they tagged everything with Key West.... mom, internet entrepreneur, teeth whitening, etc. Except for moms, we don't have any of those... especially white teeth...

Re:Slashdot statism strikes again.

[swb]

The problem is, fraud is generally more about a one-time theft than duping you into buying inferior goods. When the snake-oil salesman came to town selling his potions, he promised they would work if you took them for 7 days, but he made sure to leave after about 5 days. He didn't care about selling you the same potion over and over, he only needed to sell it to you ONCE.

You're right that market forces will eventually hurt the sellers of inferior goods, but that's not the kind of "fraud" that's most common.