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Yet Again, Google Tricked Into Serving Scam Amazon Ads (zdnet.com)
Zack Whittaker, reporting for ZDNet: For hours on Thursday, the top Google search result for "Amazon" was pointed to a scam site. The bad ad appeared at the very top of the search result for anyone searching for the internet retail giant -- even above the legitimate search result for Amazon.com. Anyone who clicked on the ad was sent to a page that tried to trick the user into calling a number for fear that their computer was infected with malware -- and not sent to Amazon.com as they would have hoped.
The page presents itself as an official Apple or Windows support page, depending on the type of computer you're visiting the page from. An analysis of the webpage's code showed that anyone trying to dismiss the popup box on the page would likely trigger the browser expanding to full-screen, giving the appearance of ransomware. A one-off event would be forgivable. But this isn't the first time this has happened. It's at least the second time in two years that Google has served up a malicious ad under Amazon's name.
The page presents itself as an official Apple or Windows support page, depending on the type of computer you're visiting the page from. An analysis of the webpage's code showed that anyone trying to dismiss the popup box on the page would likely trigger the browser expanding to full-screen, giving the appearance of ransomware. A one-off event would be forgivable. But this isn't the first time this has happened. It's at least the second time in two years that Google has served up a malicious ad under Amazon's name.
If it loses them a few customers ... fine with me. The company responsible for destroying businesses that actually pay workers decently and don't abuse their warehouse workers -- I'm not going to shed a tear for them.
Bad karma yields bad results.
Advertising is by its very nature an intent to deceive for profit.
These are just more blatant than most.
Just recently other sites I visit seemed to have a flood of full-screen popover ads, where I would see the main site for a few seconds while it loaded and then, BAM as the entire screen was filled with a warning about needing a virus scanner.
It seems like there's some kind of wave attack going on...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Google: we'll give you the safest phone in the world! Later that day... we don't know how to stop putting malware on our website
... gets modern monoculture problems.
No news here.
Curiously enough, this is only due to both Google and Amazon being the only big players in their respective fields.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I'll turn it off completely once this problem is dealt with. The prior sentence can also be read "I'm not turning off ad blocker, because they won't likely fix this within my lifetime".
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
Google and Amazon have been at each other's throats for the last few years. It wouldn't surprise me if Google helped or Amazon wanting to hurt Google commissioned something like this.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
That had better be a link to Rick Astley's greatest hit, young man.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
There will always be gullible voters and morons, God loves them and made many of them.
My problem is with the Supreme Court. Much of what we see going on now is because the Kangaroos decided that Corporations are people and that spending millions on elections is free speech. If I were going to collect scalps, I'd start with Thomas. I would personally behead him.
Google makes money from adverts whether the advert is just an advert or is spam, or malware. It really doesn't make any difference to google. I'd say that *you* are the one getting tricked if you believe what google says.
I haven't seen malware for many years ever since I put ad-blockers on each of my loved one's machines.
Who searches for Amazon ? Just type in amazon.com or amazon.ca or amazon.(insert your country code here).
You live and learn, or you don't learn much.
I had that happen just this morning on a less well protected computer. Fun stuff.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Briefly yesterday, on a fresh install of Windows 10, Bing was sending people to the wrong avast website if you typed "avast" into the search. They fixed it pretty quickly.
I couldn't care less about page intrusions, content that's difficult to read, nonsense that I don't want to buy, or even scams in adverts. Those things have never been an issue for me as they're ignoble. I don't enjoy the privacy intrusions at all, that's some scary stuff, but that's not the biggest issue for me personally. The biggest problem with advertising on websites is the possibility of being served malicious adverts. I've got a lot of code on my machines and I've got a lot of NDA's for clients. I'm contractually bound to take every reasonable precaution to protect their property that either I myself directly or my company has developed for them. I'm bound by law to keep their information private and secure.
Ad blockers are just one of several efforts taken to reduce the risk and mitigate liability should anything ever get out that ought not be out. I've never had a virus on this network so far, nor any successful unwanted intrusion... though many attempts. Mostly bots from Russia or China but some from the USA.
I intend to keep it that way. Until the web advertising platforms are legitimately safe I'll continue to block adverts on all of my work machines and any personally used machine that even comes close to the work ones.
I do however frequently lament that so few of my clients are willing to use a Linux based platform but not half as much as I lament that most of my employees insist on using Windows.
There are no stupid questions, just stupid people.