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I feel like all the technical arguments here are besides the point. The ad is designed to take you to a page, which tells you a lie, to convince you to give the

I feel like all the technical arguments here are besides the point. The ad is designed to take you to a page, which tells you a lie, to convince you to give them your money. We already have a legal term for people that make money by misrepresenting something, it's called fraud. Sure, you can tell me it will still be a cat or mouse game and that laws aren't gonna reach into whatever sort of clickfarm network exists far outside of US jurisdictions, but make it so people are held accountable for this kinda stuff. I'm no fan of the carcereal state, I'm not suggesting that we throw people in jail or drone bomb their server farm, perhaps large fines and getting banned making ads across any platform would work. I dunno, just seems there are not many incentives against this sort of behavior in an ad-dominated internet.

lucb1e 7y ago
In this case, the technical side is also at fault for allowing this (on every other website (well, aside from Google search results), the status bar shows on hover where you will be taken if you click), but I do agree that we very often talk about the technical aspect and not the legal one. I don't know any country where anyone goes to the police when they had a malware infection. It's a little like countries where there is no point going to the police for theft: nobody was killed so the police has better things to do. Here too, if you're not a huge corporation with millions in damage, they won't even look at it, even if you supply logs that point to an IP within their jurisdiction. (Example of a few years ago in the Netherlands: employer was hacked, hundreds of customer websites taken offline, IP address came from a home connection in the same city as we were in, police took the report straight to /dev/null...) The only way to get anything done legally is by starting lawsuits yourself, which doesn't work for criminal cases, but oh-so-conveniently works for online copyright infringement.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
> We already have a legal term for people that make money by misrepresenting something, it's called fraud. A nitpick, but if that was the definition of fraud, most of existing advertising would land people in jail. Unfortunately, laws around advertising are way too lax. It's definitely not a technical problem, but the technical issues discussed are a symptom of it. They're enabling scummy behaviour in order to profit from it.
- llamataboot 7y ago
  Well, I can certainly tell you my snakeoil will improve your skin (I'm not making any medical claims and this isn't FDA approved), but I can't advertise that a new study has found that all people named TeMPoral will die within 10 days unless they buy my vitamin with a 100% cure rate. I agree with you both about advertising being generally an awful thing that is almost always solely designed to manipulate someone rather than give them information, and that the laws are too lax, but this sort of YOU HAVE A VIRUS advertising would be illegal. (Then again it's barely any worse than the postal junk mail I get designed to look like a sort of official bank repossession notice trying to get me to buy some scammy insurance...)
boomlinde 7y ago
Google are in complete control of the links on their web pages, so why shouldn't they be held accountable for it? Is there a reasonable argument against this that doesn't again boil down to technicalities? If they're paid money by fraudsters to facilitate the fraud and actively misrepresent the addresses of their links, they're in on it, as far as I'm concerned.

lucb1e 7y ago

In this case, the technical side is also at fault for allowing this (on every other website (well, aside from Google search results), the status bar shows on hover where you will be taken if you click), but I do agree that we very often talk about the technical aspect and not the legal one. I don't know any country where anyone goes to the police when they had a malware infection. It's a little like countries where there is no point going to the police for theft: nobody was killed so the police has better things to do. Here too, if you're not a huge corporation with millions in damage, they won't even look at it, even if you supply logs that point to an IP within their jurisdiction. (Example of a few years ago in the Netherlands: employer was hacked, hundreds of customer websites taken offline, IP address came from a home connection in the same city as we were in, police took the report straight to /dev/null...) The only way to get anything done legally is by starting lawsuits yourself, which doesn't work for criminal cases, but oh-so-conveniently works for online copyright infringement.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

> We already have a legal term for people that make money by misrepresenting something, it's called fraud. A nitpick, but if that was the definition of fraud, most of existing advertising would land people in jail. Unfortunately, laws around advertising are way too lax. It's definitely not a technical problem, but the technical issues discussed are a symptom of it. They're enabling scummy behaviour in order to profit from it.

llamataboot 7y ago
Well, I can certainly tell you my snakeoil will improve your skin (I'm not making any medical claims and this isn't FDA approved), but I can't advertise that a new study has found that all people named TeMPoral will die within 10 days unless they buy my vitamin with a 100% cure rate. I agree with you both about advertising being generally an awful thing that is almost always solely designed to manipulate someone rather than give them information, and that the laws are too lax, but this sort of YOU HAVE A VIRUS advertising would be illegal. (Then again it's barely any worse than the postal junk mail I get designed to look like a sort of official bank repossession notice trying to get me to buy some scammy insurance...)

boomlinde 7y ago

Google are in complete control of the links on their web pages, so why shouldn't they be held accountable for it? Is there a reasonable argument against this that doesn't again boil down to technicalities? If they're paid money by fraudsters to facilitate the fraud and actively misrepresent the addresses of their links, they're in on it, as far as I'm concerned.