back to article Scam victims find same fraudulent ads lurking on Facebook and Google even after flagging them up

UK consumer watchdog Which? has found that ad giants Google and Facebook are failing to remove online scam ads even after victims report them. A third of those reporting scam ads to Google found the same offending ads still present, while the figure was a quarter for antisocial media site Facebook. In terms of gullibility, of …

  1. Shadow Systems

    I helped my Mom yesterday.

    I am not my Mom's tech guy for her MBP laptop, that's StepDad's balliwick. But when I learned that she was "getting flooded with crap ads", I asked about what ad blocker she was using. Her reply of "Ad what-now?" was all the (horrifying) answer I needed.

    I sat down with her, had her Be My Eyes, & helped her download & install ad blocking software for her machine. One reboot later & I knew I'd done good by the fact that I will be enjoying a Mom's home made apple pie for dessert. And now that I think about it, an apple pie for an Apple try is a rather amusing pun. =-)p

    I asked StepDad why he hadn't installed an ad blocker on her machine. His reply was "Because she never asked for one?" I wanted to kick his nuts up out the top of his skull. Of COURSE she didn't ask for it, she's not tech savvy you blithering dolt! GAH!

    *Deep calming breath*

    Anyway, Mom is happy, I'll be happy tonight when she comes over to deliver that apple pie, & my StepDad may find himself sleeping on the couch for awhile for not doing his job.

    *Wanders off whistling innocently*

    1. kain preacher

      Re: I helped my Mom yesterday.

      Five years ago I was visiting mom and shocked that she had 5 toolbars installed. Se was like but I use them. Uninstalled. Installed ad blockers , and crap two of her redit sites do not work right with ad blocker .I've had banks not work right with ad blockers installed. Same for educational web sites I had to use for school.

      1. Magani
        Pint

        Re: I helped my Mom yesterday.

        If ad blockers are causing problems, research Pi-Hole.

        Set and forget basically, and in my 3 month-to-date experience, not one site has complained about it being an ad blocker.

  2. iron Silver badge

    > In the meantime, we'd urge the usual caution around ads lurking in social media feeds or search results.

    What are ads and social media feeds? They don't seem to appear on my computer. ;)

    1. Terry 6 Silver badge

      Silly comment

      On El Reg ( I would assume 100%) we use all the blockers and stuff. So there's no point being all smug about it.

      Out in the real world (TM) they don't, sadly, mostly.

      More worrying even than that, they buy stuff that presents itself to them on Facebook.

      Really. People who wouldn't give a door-to-door salesman who they can see in front of them the time of day will trust all shorts of shit because it pops up in a social media feed from a hidden and anonymous source.

      This very fact has shredded what little respect I had for the Human Species.

      1. hoola Silver badge

        Re: Silly comment

        Yes and no, on many corporate installations everything can be so locked down that doing something intelligent like adding an Ad Blocker is deemed too dangerous and must be blocked.

        That is the situation we are in. You cannot do anything useful to sort the browsers out even to the point that it will not open previous tabs or even allow an icognito tab. The latter is a serous pain when you are trying to test stuff.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    > "Online platforms must be given a legal responsibility to identify, remove and prevent fake and fraudulent content on their sites. The case for including scams in the Online Safety Bill is overwhelming and the government needs to act now."

    I've mentioned this before, I'm sure, but there is a successful precedent for this proposal so it will work.

    Ages ago, before the Internet, scammers used small ads in local newspapers. Over time the proportion of scam ads increased steadily until it reached the point where you simply couldn't trust a small ad anymore and stories of goods not arriving and refund cheques bouncing were rife. Eventually the Government passed a law making the newspaper liable and the scamming pretty much stopped overnight.

    There was a fair bit of wailing from the papers in the run up as they tried to claim that small ads were a vital source of revenue but somehow they all managed to survive.

    1. CrackedNoggin Bronze badge

      "... but somehow they all managed to survive"

      Until competition with online sites, not subjected to the same liabilities for criminal advertising, wiped them out.

      1. adam 40 Silver badge

        Legal Ad-Vice

        "Eventually the Government passed a law making the newspaper liable and the scamming pretty much stopped overnight."

        Time to apply the same to online sites, therefore.

  4. batfink

    Why isn't this front-page news?

    So Which? have done a survey and found that FIFTEEN PERCENT of people have fallen victim to some online scam or other? Jesus wept.

    If this is representative, then it means millions of people have been ripped off. IIRC the adult population in the UK is ~50M, so that would be 7,500,000 victims.

    Why isn't this plastered across the front pages of all the UK newspapers?

    1. Chris G

      Re: Why isn't this front-page news?

      "Why isn't this plastered across the front pages of all the UK newspapers?"

      Perhaps because the news papers don't want to encourage closer scrutiny of their advertisers?

      Whatever the reason, any given subject needs to sell newspapers so i suspect they are looking at the best way to really sensationalise it first.

      Personally I have never bought anything directly from an ad and I doubt I ever will, if I want something I always look around for the best version and a good deal.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Why isn't this front-page news?

        "Perhaps because the news papers don't want to encourage closer scrutiny of their advertisers?"

        As someone else just mentioned, print newspapers have a legal duty to check their advertisers. Online "publishers" don't have the same legal responsibility. I'd have thought the print media would be all over this. Unless, of course, their own websites also make use of this same exemption.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Why isn't this front-page news?

          Big time. They all run the same spammy ads along the lines "Man in [your town here] just got £30,000. See how you could too" and "If you were born in that 80's, you could be in for a nice surprise" or "Over 50? The government doesn't want you to see this".

          I only have contempt for any company promoting these spammy clickbait ad services.

  5. alain williams Silver badge

    Ads make money ...

    what incentive is there for google/facebook to do anything real to remove them ?

    1. katrinab Silver badge
      Megaphone

      Re: Ads make money ...

      Because if people get the idea that things advertised on Facebook and Google are scams, they won't respond to the ads in future, and if people don't respond to ads, advertisers won't pay for them.

      1. Andy Non Silver badge

        Re: Ads make money ...

        I've never bought anything advertised online. I treat all such ads as potential scams. If I want to buy something I research it myself and do checks on the vendor if they are online.

      2. jmch Silver badge

        Re: Ads make money ...

        "if people don't respond to ads, advertisers won't pay for them."

        Fb, Google etc considerably overstate the impact of their ads, but advertisers keep on paying. And tons of users don't click on ads, but just enough do to keep the gravy train going

      3. Sherrie Ludwig

        Re: Ads make money ...

        Because if people get the idea that things advertised on Facebook and Google are scams, they won't respond to the ads in future, and if people don't respond to ads, advertisers won't pay for them.

        Already don't. If something perchance looks interesting, I will look it up through a regular search engine. Why people don't do this is just a measure of the conjecture that intelligence is a constant and the population is rising.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Ads make money ...

          And 99 times out of 100, if the product isn't a scam, you can get it cheaper from a more reputable seller.

  6. Mike 137 Silver badge

    Surprise, surprise

    Let's get real.

    Why on Earth should we believe they give a fetid dingo's kidneys about fraudulent adverts? They are fundamentally interested in "impressions" - what the advertiser pays them for. They get paid the same whether or not the ad is fraudulent, and taking down an ad loses revenue.

    1. sitta_europea Silver badge

      Re: Surprise, surprise

      And the same applies to that other excrescence, gmail.

      Google runs half the AI on the planet and it still can't spot an emailed banking scam, even when there are eighteen different indications of criminal intent in the message.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Surprise, surprise

        Actually, Gmail does a pretty good job tagging suspicious e-mails sent /to/ my Gmail account. On the other hand I get a lot of e-mails into my work mailbox /from/ @gmail.com addresses. And there is no way to report those.

        Lately, they don't even use the traditional keywords (FIFTY SEVEN MILLION US DOLLARS or THE PEACE OF THE LORD BE UNTO YOU), just a generic "write me back".

  7. doublelayer Silver badge

    They are right

    "Which? said: The biggest reason for not reporting adverts that caused a scam to Facebook was that victims didn't think the platform would do anything about it or take it down – this was the response from nearly a third (31 per cent) of victims."

    Most online platforms don't bother doing much about fraud or abuse on their platform, to the extent that it's basically pointless trying to point out problems. Take a recent attempt I made to take down a phishing site. It used an obviously malicious domain name purchased from a registrar and also hosted the server on resources from that registrar. I sent a message to their abuse system notifying them of this. After two days of silence, I received a message informing me that the server they hosted with the registrar redirected the link to a server run elsewhere, so they could do nothing. Yes, the company which could revoke the domain name and thus disable all links going to it or revoke the server doing the redirection and obtain the same outcome could do nothing. If they don't want to do anything to save their income stream, why do they bother spending money on people to come up with excuses for why they're not going to take down fraudulent things? A bot which just says "We reviewed and think it is legitimate" is much cheaper.

    1. Andy Non Silver badge

      Re: They are right

      I stopped reporting obvious scams on facebook because they never took any action. Same with spammers. Waste of time reporting them. The moral is to never buy anything advertised online. The policy works well for me.

      1. jameswyper

        Re: They are right

        To be fair to Facebook they do take some scam posts down. Last week I reported an obvious "win a mobile home" like-and-share scam that required credit card info to "claim" the prize. It only took me one referral for a review of their initial refusal to see that anything was wrong. And OK, they removed the post but took no action against the profile despite it having an obviously fake name: "[Company X] Traveel", but who said this sort of thing should be easy?

        And just this morning I got a couple of notifications that they had removed some sponsored posts advertising copycat posters and mugs that infringed on the owner's intellectual property rights. I can't remember exactly when I reported the posts - because it was well over a year ago - but I expect they have been busy counting all their money or something.

        1. DevOpsTimothyC

          Re: They are right

          Being Fair to Facebook would make them legally liable for any revenue they earn through criminal proceeds. For most crimes it's called accessory.

          I'm surprised someone hasn't done them for wilful negligence. It's the same with a large online retailer who is happy to accept counterfeit goods and then claim it's not their problem, they only run the platform that allows others to abuse it.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Youtube is the worst

    People think of Google as a trusted company.

    People assume video ads injected between youtube videos are not scammy.

    There have been so many scam adverts on youtube (most from the same company judging by the font and language tone used. They are quite diverse in their products, but are generally selling something valid but greatly exaggerating its capabilities and inflating its cost.... The torch the army wants to ban, the internet "speed-booster" [WiFi extender] your ISP doesn't want you knowing about, the teeth cleaning system that scares dentists etc.etc) that I tell less savvy friends to ignore every YouTube advert, assuming it is a con. I've even told some legit advertiser's that they are advertising in a sea of scams.

    Google should be personally responsible for any scam they let through. Until they're not, making customers and potential advertisers aware of their reputation is the only way they may ever take notice.

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge
      Mushroom

      Re: Google should be personally responsible

      Absolutely agree.

      It's on your platform. If you don't care to vet the ads you let through, you pay the damages.

      You're free to go sue the scammer afterwards.

  9. Claptrap314 Silver badge

    Obligatory

    xkcd

  10. Alumoi Silver badge

    "Fraudulent activity is not allowed on Facebook..."

    Unless we get money out of it. Same with every other social media and search engine.

    After all you can always blame those mighy convenient 'state-backed foreign hackers'.

  11. Kane
    Alien

    Mandy's Story

    Did she at least try on the sunglasses?

    We're crafting the transparent computing environment.

    OBEY

  12. tmTM

    eBay is just as bad

    Thousands of fake listings every day, they do nothing to prevent them.

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