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Google's Top Search Result For 'Target' Was A Tech Support Scam (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader quotes BleepingComputer:
Malicious ads displayed in Google search results for Target -- the US retailer -- redirected users to a tech support scam. The malvertising campaign was spotted on Friday by a US user who posted his observations to a StackExchange thread. The rogue ad appeared when users searched for the term "target," right at the top of all search results, [and] used a feature of the Google Ads service that allows ad publishers to display a URL but redirect users to another link. For example, in the rogue ad, the displayed link was "target.com," but users were redirected to "tech-supportcenter.us." Surprisingly, this got past Google's ad quality control service... The page users landed on was mimicking the style of Microsoft's real website, but was urging users to call a phone number to remove a non-existent "HARDDISK_ROOTKIT_TROJAN_HUACK.EXE" file.
The article points out the same thing happen in February when Google's top search result for Amazon was a spoof site with another tech support scam.
The article points out the same thing happen in February when Google's top search result for Amazon was a spoof site with another tech support scam.
Noticed today on the news.google.com site that two "stories" under the "Health" section were gibberish (kind of like covfefe) and when I clicked on them one led to an online casino site and another to a "Canadian drug" seller. The news headlines appeared legitimate. Not as dangerous but still disturbing.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
People expecting to find Target, found themselves a mark.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
0.0.0.0 googleadservices.com
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Hey, buddy. You forgot to renew your domain name. Careful or someone might nab it from ya!
An excellent opportunity for a goat dealer on Christmas Island!
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
If the folks at Mozilla are listening, this is a golden opportunity to score some brownie points.
It should be possible for a browser to detect when a click on an anchor tag gets intercepted by a javascript onclick that goes to a completely different URL, and for the browser to throw a big fat warning instead.
Of course, nobody would expect for Chrome to do anything like this, since Google depends on this hostile and abusive practice for generating ad click revenue. But I would think that this would be a value tool for blocking potential exploits, and a thumb in the eye of Google.
Ordinary people don't realize that search is a skill.
Not a difficult skill, but a skill none the less.
They think that because they know how to click on a Google bookmark that they're done.
Often you see someone asking a question on some forum. They claim they "Googled it" but found no answers. Every once in a while in some probably misguided attempt at helping the sad user, I "Google it" and present the answer to them in a followup post, which takes me more time to type than to search and discover.
I don't select the top results, usually. I will dig three pages deep, at least, to find perhaps three or four promising summaries. I open them in a new window in the background without looking at them, until I've decided "I'm done, let's have a look" and then if I don't like the results, I'll rephrase the search terms. It's rare to get three or more good links on the first page result. Others might have different techniques and flexibility if you are not getting the right results is important. Try another engine, force the web to give you what you want somehow.
But that's now how they use Google. And they don't know better.
Other times I will be at someone's house or in public, and we might be talking about something, and they are at the helm and I suggest a search. When I look at the search terms they use, I am dumbfounded. There is no way they will get results with those terms. So people don't even know the first step, properly.
You can help people to a certain extent, but I find they just revert to their old useless habits pretty much immediately. Nothing you can do about it, and many people and entities profit from it. Such is the web.