17 ms·

Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban

487 points by atg_abhishek 5y ago

DistressedDrone 5y ago
> Muldoon didn’t respond to a question about why the ads were able to violate Google’s policy. I thought it was obvious by now that Google is a money train, and no one is watching the tracks. Their main distinctions as a Fortune 500 company are avoiding human contact and abandoning projects.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  Maybe Muldoon just has a policy against returning the calls of a full-time anti-Google mouthpiece that is literally funded by DuckDuckGo. It really bugs me how HN acts so skeptically about most topics but falls hook, line, and sinker for every astroturf campaign that comes along.
  - Karunamon 5y ago
    I too lament HN's complete loss of even the pretense of objectivity when it comes to anything Facebook or Google, but in this case, as long as the accusations are factual, I think there's value in the competition attempting to keep them honest.
kiwijamo 5y ago
Even more reason to switch to other search engines such as DuckDuckGo.
- harles 5y ago
  Is DuckDuckGo better at this or just a smaller target people ignore? A couple quick searches didn’t turn up anything, but sure seems like they’re vulnerable to the same attack vector.
  - jeffbee 5y ago
    DuckDuckGo shows me three scams in the ads at the top of the page when I search "employer ID number".
    - harry8 5y ago
      I got an ad for ebay. followed by 3 results. The ad should be more clearly marked but I don't see any scams here. [1] https://www.thebalancesmb.com/how-to-find-your-ein-4768994 https://www.thebalancesmb.com/how-to-find-your-ein-4768994 [2] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/employer-identification-number.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/employer-identification... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employer_Identification_Number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employer_Identification_Number
      - jeffbee 5y ago
        I get "Get An IRS EIN Number Here - Online IRS EIN Application ein-gov-online.com" and "Employer ID Number App - Edit, Sign, Print, Fill Online irs-form-ss-4.com". On Bing.com I get https://www.irs-tax-ein-number.com https://www.irs-tax-ein-number.com, https://irs.usa-taxid.com https://irs.usa-taxid.com, https://ein-gov-online.com/irs-ein/application https://ein-gov-online.com/irs-ein/application, and https://www.irs-ein-tax-id.com https://www.irs-ein-tax-id.com
  - harry8 5y ago
    I know there's a small section of people who will defend big tech under any and all circumstances but really? "I'm unsure if the competition have solved this problem that I tried and verified they don't have." Just seems like a pretty terrible defense of a big tech company that definitely hasn't solved that problem that they absolutely do have and know it will defraud people. Remember the old days when google had their ads clearly and obviously marked, off to the side of your search results so as to minimize the potential for confusing ads with results? Yeah they decided there was more money in shaking down people to claim top spot when people specifically search for them. You search for coke, the top result is pepsi if they pay google. Pay google so people get what they search for. Make it more likely to click on the paid ad than the search result for the exact same thing. People getting ripped off is collateral damage, not worth sacrificing shakedown proceeds to avoid actively helping fraud. It stinks to high heaven and Google employees know this. "We haven't fixed their grift. That fixing it might impact ours is totally unrelated." --Google
- detaro 5y ago
  duckduckgo's ads are not exactly a beacon of quality either, so I wouldn't trust them necessarily to not let something like this through. Install adblockers for everyone you know.
  - kiwijamo 5y ago
    Just realised I probably haven't seen DuckDuckGo's ads due to my adblocker. The downvotes for my original comment seems justified from what I read. Thanks for enlightening me.
- mrweasel 5y ago
  I reported the same scammer ad at least five time over a period of a month on DuckDuckGo. The ad was impersonating a major Danish news site. This issue isn’t restricted to Google. The only main difference is that Google run their own ad network. In both cases it show how little verification is going on with online ads. If anything I believe the ad networks should be held resonsible for the ads they push to the end user.
r0m4n0 5y ago
The one that got me was USPS mail forwarding. I am very privy to these things but I must have just misread the URL. 1. Googled “mail forwarding” 2. Must have clicked one of the ads like: https://www.unitedaddressupdate.com https://www.unitedaddressupdate.com 3. Quickly used the autocomplete to fill out all the forms including my credit card information The brilliant part of this scam is that mail forwarding for a year in the US costs $0.99 so the expectation is you have to pay the USPS so nothing seemed odd… the websites even look almost identical. The show was over when I received a notification from my Chase that they charged $70 instead. Chase appears to have caught on before Google though because the charge didn’t go through
- notimetorelax 5y ago
  They even have a disclaimer below stating that they provide more services than USPS but it’s so hard to tell if it’s flat out lie or not.
- 0xffff2 5y ago
  I was so confused the wehn I went to fill out a change of address form when moving recently. Not only do I have to pay USPS, but they sell my new address and I can't opt out? I don't get any mail that's important enough to put up with that nonsense. Surely it's in the USPS's best interest to encourage people to complete a change of address and yet they seem to do exactly the opposite. Hope whoever moved into my old apartment doesn't mind getting junk mail from whatever airline frequent flier programs I forgot to update.
  - ModernMech 5y ago
    > Surely it's in the USPS's best interest to encourage people to complete a change of address and yet they seem to do exactly the opposite. For some reason, some people in our government believe that the USPS must be run as a business instead of as a service to citizens. This is one of the manifestations of that belief. Selling your personal information so you get flooded with advertisements is one of the most business-like moves I can think of.
sen 5y ago
I teach everyone in my family to never trust the first few sponsored results now matter how convincing they may be. As far as I’m concerned Google know exactly what they’re doing and are actively complicit in perpetuating online scams against one family and friends. Are we seriously supposed to believe a company of their size, with their talent pool, and their money, can’t filter out such blatantly obvious crap? Sure.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  Just so we're clear, there are no "sponsored results" on Google. There are results, and there are ads. It matters because if you lose the distinction you will lose the ability to remember what "sponsored results" were. On Yahoo! search, all of the results were paid. You paid more for a higher position. This dubious service was provided by Overture, and every search engine except Google was a customer of Overture's technology. The service that Google provides is specifically not paid results placement.
  - lstamour 5y ago
    Absolutely. Google's making ads look like search results [1], but let's bring up an example from the early-to-mid 2000s [2] because that's extra relevant here when today's relevant search engines put ads confusingly at the top of your search results. The ad isn't a "sponsored result" but it's fair to say the results are sponsored (and confusingly so). 1. https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/23/squint-and-youll-click-it/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/23/squint-and-youll-click-it/ 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_Media_Native https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_Media_Native
    - jeffbee 5y ago
      Regarding #1, did you ever notice how the "dark pattern" that article was about got reverted shortly after that, except not on DuckDuckGo which still contains that "dark pattern"?
      - lstamour 5y ago
ta1234567890 5y ago
And at the same time that Google supposedly can’t catch these guys, they randomly suspend my ads account without even an explanation. And of course no recourse or way of getting in touch with a human.
- dannyw 5y ago
  Maybe you're not spending enough money. I'm sure Google's AI suspension bot doesn't go around suspending their top spenders (account wise), even if it has high confidence there's a breach.
  - ta1234567890 5y ago
    You are spot on. In fact my account had been inactive for almost a year when I got the suspension notice. Also, while active, I stopped accepting any of their automatic “improvement” suggestions, as they inevitably lead to increase spending, but almost never to better conversion. If I ever need to advertise with Google again, I’ll probably need to go through an agency and pay quite a bit extra.
  - 55555 5y ago
    lol I doubt this very much. Facebook randomly banned someone recently who had spent 72 million dollars (?) over a continuous period of 11 years. Google is better but not that much better. I've spent millions on ads with G and Fb and have never even had a real rep.
twirlock 5y ago
>centralizes everything >is still useless >basically centralizes everything so it can become useless
tiagobraw 5y ago
I hate that there is no easy way to block or report a bad ad on google… don’t like that 30 minute ad in a 5 minutes video? too bad… don’t like that adult content ad on the middle of your daughter video? too bad.. not that you can use a different platform anyway
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
bambax 5y ago
Having used some kind of adblocking, on all devices, for as long as I can remember, I realize I live in an alternate universe where all these scams don't exist [0]. If at some point adblocking is defeated I'm up for a very difficult crash landing into reality. [0]: almost; top results can be scams of course; but it's rare.
- RussianCow 5y ago
  I had quite a rude awakening when I switched to an iPhone recently. I had to adopt NextDNS for its domain-level ad blocking, but it’s amazing how many ads still come through. I don’t know how people browse the web without any sort of ad blocking these days.
  - zuppy 5y ago
    there are adblockers for ios too, for example here's a good one: https://1blocker.com https://1blocker.com
    - bobbylarrybobby 5y ago
      Safari only though
    - stephen_g 5y ago
      Yeah, I use 1blocker too, it's fairly good but annoying they only give you monthly rule updates (unless a major site breaks) unless you pay a subscription. Even when I bought the 'Pro' version, and then they changed to a subscription model... Still, it works pretty well. But how I wish it was possible to have uBlock Origin running in mobile Safari (and desktop Safari for that matter)...
      - pawsforapplase 5y ago
        They do have a one-time payment option of about $40. But in my experience, it simply does not work compared to other platforms. I still see a lot of ads even with their strictest settings, and it also seems to break a lot of sites without having any toggle switches in the browser UI. It's gotten to the point where I put the iPhone down and pick up another device if I need to access a website. After a few months, I'd like to just resell the phone. But on the social side of things, having a number with blue chat bubbles is a depressingly effective status symbol, and Apple is better about in-app tracking. It's getting hard to ignore how harmful the duopoly in phone operating systems is to consumers. Carrying two phones around is not a tenable solution.
tylerchilds 5y ago
[OC]: http://sanmateogov.org/ http://sanmateogov.org/
paxys 5y ago
Reason #11520 for why ad blocking on the internet is an absolute necessity.
- amelius 5y ago
  We should ban ads already.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    Or at least attach proper liability to them. If you promote a scam, you're considered complicit and liable for the underlying crime.
  - Marsymars 5y ago
    I've actually moderated a bit over time. One of my favourite approaches is a regulatory approach that mandates that if you offer a free, ad-supported service, you must offer the service ad-free for a price, which is to be limited in proportion to what an ad-supported user is worth.
raister 5y ago
What's ironically is that the ads were paid with scam money, so it's like Google is in fact, part of the 'gang'... Crazy world! Most part of scams register names that looks like something legit, but, of course, no one seems to care who's buying what they're buying when registering domain names.
- Joeri 5y ago
  Google should commit to donating all funds received from ads that are later detected as scams to charity.
  - Larrikin 5y ago
    In the case described in the article of government impersonation, I'd prefer a 10x fine.
    - pbhjpbhj 5y ago
      Shouldn't companies actively aiding fraud to the the tune of, I expect, $Billions have their executives go to jail and the company garnished of at least some percentage points of global revenue? Taking money to put fraudulent ads above legitimate results seems like it's not doing the minimum due diligence to skirt around a willful negligence accusation.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - josefx 5y ago
    That implies that Google has a right to money it makes from scams. Next up: Driver of getaway car gets to keep his share from robbery, will donate $10 to security guards widow.
    - namibj 5y ago
      No, it's separate. They donate whatever they received, without impact on their other obligations, like refunding victims or so.
ahelwer 5y ago
I fell prey to this. Might have been the exact same website, too. Had had a drink with dinner, thought heck why not file for my EIN for an independent consulting LLC I was creating? Was using a fresh OS install where I hadn't yet installed Firefox with an adblocker. Usual defenses were weakened. Boom, $250 down the drain before I really thought it all through. Fortunately I was able to get it refunded by initiating a chargeback and telling their website support that I believed they were misrepresenting themselves as the IRS. It really was a "welcome to the real world" moment, though - my very first act as a new business in the US was to get scammed. This theme has continued. 90% of the business mail I get are scams masquerading as official government mail to get business licenses or whatever. These websites are run by scumbags who should all be arrested. And Google, of course, should pay actual penalties because it's been all upside for them.
- FriedrichN 5y ago
  People think I'm paranoid checking domains, certificates, and bank numbers but it's a small price to pay as you found out. You lost $250, some lose thousands. This stuff needs to be regulated, companies like Google need to be held accountable for what they serve up to users. No more hiding behind this shield of "we're just a platform" when they damn well know they're the platform. It's all fun and games until your (grand)parents lose 20K to some scumbag scammers.
  - exporectomy 5y ago
    As long as they actually provide the service they're advertising, it doesn't sound quite as bad as an actual scam. Reselling something at a markup but with better advertising is common in commerce. Up to the customer to decide if the price is what they're willing to pay. It's only government services that have a kind of aura of "don't be a dick" around them, maybe because people feel they can trust them not to be profit driven.
    - yarcob 5y ago
      It's definitely a scam. They do not "provide a service", they mislead you into thinking you are dealing with a government office and that you are paying an official fee. This is not "better advertising", it's just a scam.
Ayesh 5y ago
Vietnam government is also impersonated in organic results. Google "Vietnam visa government website", and you will see a result from "govt.vn" as the too result. That is not the official web site, but neither Vietnamese NIC nor google didn't find a problem with it.
ollybee 5y ago
This does not seem be a problem in the UK, searches topics that might be prone to this all seem to give the correct .gov.uk site as the first result with no ads that could be described as misleading. I wonder if the UK government, advertising standards agencies and trading standards authorities have put more pressure on google? Or perhaps the legal landscape here makes it untenable to operate such a scam business.
- eloisius 5y ago
  Probably not as lucrative as targeting Americans. I’ve noticed a nice side affect of living in Taiwan to be that there is generally less trash to sift through when looking for this kind of stuff. Spammers just don’t target us as much.
- xfz 5y ago
  They still pop up in the UK like a rash that won't go away. https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/jun/16/once-again-copycat-sites-creep-back-to-the-top-of-google https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/jun/16/once-again-cop...
- andylynch 5y ago
  I was going to say there used to be (home office applications come to mind), but searching for something like ‘SORN’ still returns 5 scammy ads above the real page you need (but the more common V5C doesn’t. I do think gov.uk has improved this compared to the past. I also noticed the uk govt is running google ads for some keywords themselves.
- Closi 5y ago
  My first attempt, “tv license”, brings back a form-filling service above the real one too. I think Google has really increased the number of in-search ads recently. It used to be that they were obvious and at the top/side, now they look like regular results and often fill up the whole first page. IMO they know they are dominant enough in the market now that they can get away with providing garbage results for some short term profit, and will just dial it back if viable competitors come along to stop anyone else entering the market.
kevinventullo 5y ago
I saw the same thing recently with renewing TSA PreChek. The top result is not the government website, but some shady middleman which seems to charge 3x to do the same thing (while also siphoning your personal information incl. passport number). It was a bit jarring, I got very far in the process before realizing something was off. Made me realize how much trust I was implicitly putting into my search engine.
Sparkyte 5y ago
My personal opinion is that Google should be held liable for allowing Ads to do so.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
Always block all ads. Make absolutely no exceptions. There is no reason to feel guilty about doing this.
- vimacs2 5y ago
  Absolutely. I consider unsolicited ads a form of violence and laugh at anybody who even tries to shame me into watching any of them. As for the accusation of effectively stealing content via refusing to allow for their (shitty) form of monetisation, unless in the rare case that a company is a workers cooperative, I don't want to hear any bullshit about robbery when you are purposely extracting surplus value out of your workers without democratic agency or fair compensation.
- tantalor 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
  - Marsymars 5y ago
    Well there are a few ways to think of that. If you consider the cognitive load of people as the limited resource, ad displayers showing ads in their own self-interest are acting against the common good.
bencollier49 5y ago
I noticed that this is happening in the UK the other day. There are firms of lawyers (are they?) creating clones of the free Citizen's Advice service and marketing it via Google Ads. Slimy stuff.
- dom111 5y ago
  Yeah, the one that caught my Mum recently was a "form filling service" for changing your driving license address. It sucks as it scams money out of people that probably don't have that much in the first place. Shortly after this she started getting additional scam calls/texts too, although this could be entirely unrelated...
  - bencollier49 5y ago
    Doubt it - these sorts of companies are very keen on people who are known to be susceptible.
    - mellavora 5y ago
      you mean Republicans?
insta_anon 5y ago
I have a hard time trying to understand why governments don’t address these scams more proactively. There is a related issue when you register a new company here in Germany: As soon as the new entity is added to the company house (called “Handelsregister”), you will start to receive fake invoices from scam companies. These invoice look very similar to official ones and some even use the official seal of the state (see https://www.firma.de/en/company-formation/beware-of-fake-handelsregister-invoices/ https://www.firma.de/en/company-formation/beware-of-fake-han... for examples). If you don’t pay close attention you can easily mistake these invoice for official ones. This scam is quite well-known and has been going on for years. To further add to the insult - the companies that send these fake invoices are usually German entities as well, not some obscure shell companies in remote islands and yet besides warnings from the government it seems that little is happening. I find it infuriating and don’t understand why it is even allowed to send another party that you never had any relation with an invoice for a service that you actually haven’t performed yet.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  There's a similar scam in place in Poland, and its continued existence confuses me too. I don't remember getting any invoices after registering my company, but I got spammed with letters telling me to pay a fee to register my company on some listing, and some of those messages did their best to make it seem they're a continuation of the official process. The deception goes as far as these companies being named in a way that sounds government-ish, and their addresses being at the same street in Warsaw (the capital) some government buildings are. The infuriating part is that it's so well-known, that both the physical government offices and the online forms where you can register your small business, are plastered with big, attention-grabbing reminders that the registration process is free. The government knows about this scam to the point of warning people about it, and yet it continues.
- nneonneo 5y ago
  Well, the FTC is _trying_, at least. They took action against On Point Global (https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings/x130054/point-global-llc https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings/x130054/po...) which operated a big network of DMV-lookalike sites. If you tried to Google for renewing your drivers license, you'd get sent to one of these sites, which looked like it would help you renew your license but would actually just charge you approx. $15 to download a PDF guide on how to use the real government website. There's a certain threshold of complaints, unfortunately. The FTC only has the resources to go after big fish. But, one thing I did learn from reading the FTC complaint is that credit card chargebacks do work, after a fashion; the company was getting repeatedly booted off of merchant accounts for accruing lots of chargebacks. I bet if people aggressively charged back the EIN scammers it'd end up hurting them too.
rapht 5y ago
These kinds of articles always boil down to how Google are not doing their job properly anymore, be it by presenting results that do not include scams, content farms and the like, or by systematically pushing ads (including dubious ones) over organic results, all in the interest of their ad business. I'm probably not technical enough, but I'm always left wondering how no one created a 'bettergoogle.com' that makes a query to google from the client side and applies an array of filters to google's output, starting by removing the ads and the results from any known bad actors. Could also be a browser extension but that makes it difficult on mobile.
- underwater 5y ago
  Because Google would sue them out of existence?
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    If you could sue Google for search ranking Google would go bankrupt.
habosa 5y ago
Clearly these should be banned because they violate Google's policy, so I don't argue that. But on a more general level, I don't really have a problem with companies offering to fill out government forms for me in exchange for my money. For instance last year I fought a traffic ticket by myself. It's not hard, but you do have to fill out like 3 different forms and mail them in. Totally free besides the stamps. There are many many "ticket fighting" companies which charge you $100 to get you out of a ticket. They act like they're lawyers but really they just fill these forms out for you. If I had to do it again, I'd pay the $100 for the convenience. How do we decide who is a scam and who is improving the experience of interacting with the government? How much friction do you have to remove before it's OK to charge? Clearly the mail forwarding ones are a scam (it's super easy through USPS) and, in my opinion, the ticket fighting ones are not a scam. So the line is somewhere in between those two poles.
- wccrawford 5y ago
  The real ones don't make it look like you're on the official site. They clearly lay out what they're doing and why they charge what they charge. It's not a scam if the customer is properly informed of the situation.
- Macha 5y ago
  I think companies who are legitimately about making the process easier can avoid can make that clear in their naming and marketing - "Foobar traffic appeals service - We make fighting tickets easier, 80% success rate" is hard to mistake for the government, while "Traffic Appeals Service, file your traffic appeal here" is a lot harder to notice that you're using a third party
jacquesm 5y ago
This is what you get when search engines and advertising companies are one and the same. The only reason this happens is because the search unit has prioritized ads and google ad revenue generating results.
Mauricebranagh 5y ago
Its harder than it looks to solve this problem. And its also not that simple to weed out bad actors when normally the government sites that should rank are probably hopeless and the senior civil servants in charge knowledge of the web is “in need of some improvement” Google and Bing could turn up the YMYL (“your money or your life” ) knob but they would also need to employ higher paid local people to vet these sorts of ads. Stricter KYC (Know Your Customer) could be required to run online adverts is another solution. Pre covid I got pitched a grade 7/6 (v senior O-6 /GS15 ) job for the DWP to sort out the technical seo side. Looking at these scam sites in search would have been a priority had that gone anywhere – maybe set up some meetings with Matt Cutts and discuss a joint us / uk approach. Maybe I should follow that job up.
- tacticalDonut 5y ago
  I've tried pitching similar roles in Government on the DoD side of the house for knowledge workers like Software Dev and Data Scientists. It's hard to get traction though when the folks making the decisions feel threatened that a 25 year old is going to be making the same as them and be the same "rank". I think part of the solution needs to be creating it on a separate scale than GS, similar to an SL or ST position, but geared specifically towards knowledge workers. That's a solution that would probably require congressional involvement though...
  - Mauricebranagh 5y ago
    Probably not going to work for 25 year old junior developers at the more senior levels you need to be aware of the political side. But its is a problem your not going to attract many B+ candidates if your so far behind industry. About 3 years ago one uk org (I wont say which one) tried pitching people on linked in I got the pitch and so did a mate who's ex military he laughed and said "not on those poverty wages"
    - tacticalDonut 5y ago
      Yeah, the problem is that the US Government is trying to hire developers in at GS11 positions (~$72k salary in high cost of living area). Never going to get good junior devs at that price point. Don't get me started on security clearance requirements in addition to low wages... The fix is to provide competitive wages, but the politics of it is difficult.
stevenicr 5y ago
I saw similar happen to my mom a few years back. She googled something like 'mail new social security card' - clicked the first result and started entering information. About 4 screens in she asked me to look at it - and we could both tell that it was likely not an official gov site at that point. was first result in google so she trusted it - it looked similar enough to a gov site to go with the easy onboarding flow.. a few details like name and addy - then submit - next screen a few more bits of info.. submit next screen - real gold like maiden name, name of dog, - they already captured the social on the first screen.. some months later the irs is telling her she needs a pin code and that her identity appears to be hacked or whatever.. no surprise. I long for the day when the faint piss-yellow box surrounded paid listings.. the engineers that came up with that perfect yellow that may show on a good desktop monitor / and in a presentation to the ftc/cpb/congress - whatever.. yet faded out on a laptop screen - and when the sun hits.. and yet as great as that was at being essentially invisible to most users - they still did away it - lets assume because it caused more clicks.. a/b testing and all the s valley bs. I had forgotten about that incident until I saw this headline - might be time enough to still ad a note about this on a reply to a different HN article a week ago - where someone said "I've never seen any evidence of anyone hurt by the large scale collection of personal data by Google and FB." - ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27064382 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27064382 ) ( Part of the discussion in regards to the article Why I Work on Ads - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27060898 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27060898 ) This is indeed another good example of damage done by the ad selling overlords. Now remembering stopping people from clicking the 'first result' for "flash player" - on so many devices, so many times - that ad was a two click malware install - of course it was a paid ad - sigh - people just don't know and google's been exploiting that for a long time.
aitchnyu 5y ago
Pet idea. All ads must lead to landing pages which lists name and address of ad broker, buyer, what the product is supposed to do and option to flag. Lots of people can't tell whats ad and whats content. Won't happen voluntarily, when Youtube ads directly leads to Play Store.
easytiger 5y ago
Just wait until you see the Google ads in Africa region. Literal scams. No subtlety. Like something from the 90s
pizzaknife 5y ago
Where does H&R Block and other tax prep services fall into this? Arent they (more or less) simply collecting a fee for handling otherwise "free" processes provided by the state and federal governments? Not suggesting these nefarious actors, who rely on ignorance of the consumer, arent a problem
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  Tax prep services have taken this game plan and gone major league by lobbying the government to prevent free, simple tax filing: https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-free-simple-hr-block-intuit-lobbying-against-it https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-fre...
- sjg007 5y ago
  They don’t mislead customers saying that they are the IRS. I view my CPA as a domain expert anyway so while I could do my own taxes and have done so in the past.. but I agree the IRS already basically knows everything.
black6 5y ago
Google, Mozilla, et alia have trained people to not enter "www.whitehouse.gov" into the combined search/url bar, but simply "white house", and then to click on one of the links that shows up in search results, because this behavior increases clicks on their ads. It's shameful. Businesses used to list the URL for their company website. Now it's "find us on facebag!"
- hansvm 5y ago
  To be fair, I'm more likely to get the official site in the presence of a typo via a search engine. In the case of .gov it doesn't matter as much since it's a tiny bit difficult to spoof them, but typo squatters are a problem for the rest of the web.
jgalt212 5y ago
PSA: https://sec.report/ https://sec.report/ is not the URL for the SEC EDGAR database which is actually located here: https://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html https://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html
hansvm 5y ago
One thing I noticed switching to a custom DNS server on my phone is that search ads are a little hard to identify on mobile nowadays, and I find myself accidentally clicking them up to a few times per week (the mistake is immediately apparent because the site won't load).
jonnycomputer 5y ago
In the traditional ad business, each ad would have been reviewed at least once. No reason Google shouldn't be held responsible and to the same standard.
doggodaddo78 5y ago
I'm waiting for AI email with phone bots in concert to commit automated identity theft and Medicare fraud.
dcdc123 5y ago
This is a really good argument not to "allow unobtrusive ads" in your adblocker. This is an example of an ad that would be allowed. Just FYI this is the default behavior of some adblockers, notably Adblock Plus.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
  The other reason not to allow it (and to replace Adblock Plus with e.g. uBlock Origin) is that Adblock Plus decided they like money more than actually limiting themselves to unobtrusive ads, and were allowing the disgusting Taboola/Outbrain/Clickbrain clickbait (not sure which of the three it was, all the same garbage) to be shown. The best part was that some websites had two versions, one more aggressive one, and a slightly toned down one. If you didn't have an adblocker, you got the first one. If you did, you got the second one, because apparently the ABP people did draw the line somewhere.
  - treesprite82 5y ago
    I believe it's Taboola, Outbrain, and Revcontent (possibly more since I last checked). https://i.imgur.com/1OGHbAW.png https://i.imgur.com/1OGHbAW.png https://i.imgur.com/4r7PAl7.png https://i.imgur.com/4r7PAl7.png (some slightly NSFW content in these example images:) https://i.imgur.com/ZF9G7fZ.png https://i.imgur.com/ZF9G7fZ.png https://i.imgur.com/hkkvuXd.png https://i.imgur.com/hkkvuXd.png https://i.imgur.com/1N2o3QT.png https://i.imgur.com/1N2o3QT.png uBlock Origin with Firefox is definitely the way to go now: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
kabdib 5y ago
I was looking at health insurance in WA state, and the sites that imitate the official government site do a pretty good job at everything except having decent, non-scammy insurance offerings.
dehrmann 5y ago
Some of this has to be tied to the evolution of ads in SERPs. They've gone from being on the right rail in a different format and different colors to being in the results, with with a perpetually lightning yellow background so you know it's sponsored. Currently, I the only meaningful difference is it says "Ad." I used to work for a comparison shopping engine. The traffic was a mix of paid and organic search. We thought about using paid traffic to test page titles and descriptions for organic pages because it's not like users could tell the difference.
PostThisTooFast 5y ago
Google is full of shit. Remember when they pledged to "punish" sites that weren't "mobile-friendly," but then DISABLED ZOOMING on their own mobile site? "You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks." Why don't you FUCK OFF, Hacker News? Once per hour is "too fast?" What a bunch of pompous fucking pricks. Our time isn't free, assholes.
kordlessagain 5y ago
Ads are a toxic and cancerous model. They need to be banned, regulated or competed out of business.
tyingq 5y ago
15 hours have passed, and Google hasn't shut it down yet. Hrm. https://imgur.com/a/AT8F5WC https://imgur.com/a/AT8F5WC
dkersten 5y ago
This is one of the reasons I have such a low opinion of Google and people who work on adtech. Google has served me adverts for misinformation, scams, malware, exploitative mobile games, gambling, religious crap, porn and incest porn games. Google and Youtube ads are absolute garbage and so is Google for serving them.
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ImNotSurprized 5y ago
Not surprizing
thrwhizzle 5y ago
I am absolutely unable to understand how a ban isn’t being followed. I have been under the impression that when legislators make something illegal it instantly goes away. Now my entire worldview is being challenged.

487 points by atg_abhishek 5y ago

> Muldoon didn’t respond to a question about why the ads were able to violate Google’s policy. I thought it was obvious by now that Google is a money train, and no one is watching the tracks. Their main distinctions as a Fortune 500 company are avoiding human contact and abandoning projects.

jeffbee 5y ago
Maybe Muldoon just has a policy against returning the calls of a full-time anti-Google mouthpiece that is literally funded by DuckDuckGo. It really bugs me how HN acts so skeptically about most topics but falls hook, line, and sinker for every astroturf campaign that comes along.
- Karunamon 5y ago
  I too lament HN's complete loss of even the pretense of objectivity when it comes to anything Facebook or Google, but in this case, as long as the accusations are factual, I think there's value in the competition attempting to keep them honest.

kiwijamo 5y ago

Even more reason to switch to other search engines such as DuckDuckGo.

harles 5y ago
Is DuckDuckGo better at this or just a smaller target people ignore? A couple quick searches didn’t turn up anything, but sure seems like they’re vulnerable to the same attack vector.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  DuckDuckGo shows me three scams in the ads at the top of the page when I search "employer ID number".
  - harry8 5y ago
    I got an ad for ebay. followed by 3 results. The ad should be more clearly marked but I don't see any scams here. [1] https://www.thebalancesmb.com/how-to-find-your-ein-4768994 https://www.thebalancesmb.com/how-to-find-your-ein-4768994 [2] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/employer-identification-number.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/employer-identification... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employer_Identification_Number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employer_Identification_Number
    - jeffbee 5y ago
      I get "Get An IRS EIN Number Here - Online IRS EIN Application ein-gov-online.com" and "Employer ID Number App - Edit, Sign, Print, Fill Online irs-form-ss-4.com". On Bing.com I get https://www.irs-tax-ein-number.com https://www.irs-tax-ein-number.com, https://irs.usa-taxid.com https://irs.usa-taxid.com, https://ein-gov-online.com/irs-ein/application https://ein-gov-online.com/irs-ein/application, and https://www.irs-ein-tax-id.com https://www.irs-ein-tax-id.com
- harry8 5y ago
  I know there's a small section of people who will defend big tech under any and all circumstances but really? "I'm unsure if the competition have solved this problem that I tried and verified they don't have." Just seems like a pretty terrible defense of a big tech company that definitely hasn't solved that problem that they absolutely do have and know it will defraud people. Remember the old days when google had their ads clearly and obviously marked, off to the side of your search results so as to minimize the potential for confusing ads with results? Yeah they decided there was more money in shaking down people to claim top spot when people specifically search for them. You search for coke, the top result is pepsi if they pay google. Pay google so people get what they search for. Make it more likely to click on the paid ad than the search result for the exact same thing. People getting ripped off is collateral damage, not worth sacrificing shakedown proceeds to avoid actively helping fraud. It stinks to high heaven and Google employees know this. "We haven't fixed their grift. That fixing it might impact ours is totally unrelated." --Google
detaro 5y ago
duckduckgo's ads are not exactly a beacon of quality either, so I wouldn't trust them necessarily to not let something like this through. Install adblockers for everyone you know.
- kiwijamo 5y ago
  Just realised I probably haven't seen DuckDuckGo's ads due to my adblocker. The downvotes for my original comment seems justified from what I read. Thanks for enlightening me.
mrweasel 5y ago
I reported the same scammer ad at least five time over a period of a month on DuckDuckGo. The ad was impersonating a major Danish news site. This issue isn’t restricted to Google. The only main difference is that Google run their own ad network. In both cases it show how little verification is going on with online ads. If anything I believe the ad networks should be held resonsible for the ads they push to the end user.

r0m4n0 5y ago

The one that got me was USPS mail forwarding. I am very privy to these things but I must have just misread the URL. 1. Googled “mail forwarding” 2. Must have clicked one of the ads like: https://www.unitedaddressupdate.com https://www.unitedaddressupdate.com 3. Quickly used the autocomplete to fill out all the forms including my credit card information The brilliant part of this scam is that mail forwarding for a year in the US costs $0.99 so the expectation is you have to pay the USPS so nothing seemed odd… the websites even look almost identical. The show was over when I received a notification from my Chase that they charged $70 instead. Chase appears to have caught on before Google though because the charge didn’t go through

notimetorelax 5y ago
They even have a disclaimer below stating that they provide more services than USPS but it’s so hard to tell if it’s flat out lie or not.
0xffff2 5y ago
I was so confused the wehn I went to fill out a change of address form when moving recently. Not only do I have to pay USPS, but they sell my new address and I can't opt out? I don't get any mail that's important enough to put up with that nonsense. Surely it's in the USPS's best interest to encourage people to complete a change of address and yet they seem to do exactly the opposite. Hope whoever moved into my old apartment doesn't mind getting junk mail from whatever airline frequent flier programs I forgot to update.
- ModernMech 5y ago
  > Surely it's in the USPS's best interest to encourage people to complete a change of address and yet they seem to do exactly the opposite. For some reason, some people in our government believe that the USPS must be run as a business instead of as a service to citizens. This is one of the manifestations of that belief. Selling your personal information so you get flooded with advertisements is one of the most business-like moves I can think of.

sen 5y ago

I teach everyone in my family to never trust the first few sponsored results now matter how convincing they may be. As far as I’m concerned Google know exactly what they’re doing and are actively complicit in perpetuating online scams against one family and friends. Are we seriously supposed to believe a company of their size, with their talent pool, and their money, can’t filter out such blatantly obvious crap? Sure.

jeffbee 5y ago
Just so we're clear, there are no "sponsored results" on Google. There are results, and there are ads. It matters because if you lose the distinction you will lose the ability to remember what "sponsored results" were. On Yahoo! search, all of the results were paid. You paid more for a higher position. This dubious service was provided by Overture, and every search engine except Google was a customer of Overture's technology. The service that Google provides is specifically not paid results placement.
- lstamour 5y ago
  Absolutely. Google's making ads look like search results [1], but let's bring up an example from the early-to-mid 2000s [2] because that's extra relevant here when today's relevant search engines put ads confusingly at the top of your search results. The ad isn't a "sponsored result" but it's fair to say the results are sponsored (and confusingly so). 1. https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/23/squint-and-youll-click-it/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/23/squint-and-youll-click-it/ 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_Media_Native https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_Media_Native
  - jeffbee 5y ago
    Regarding #1, did you ever notice how the "dark pattern" that article was about got reverted shortly after that, except not on DuckDuckGo which still contains that "dark pattern"?
    - lstamour 5y ago

ta1234567890 5y ago

And at the same time that Google supposedly can’t catch these guys, they randomly suspend my ads account without even an explanation. And of course no recourse or way of getting in touch with a human.

dannyw 5y ago
Maybe you're not spending enough money. I'm sure Google's AI suspension bot doesn't go around suspending their top spenders (account wise), even if it has high confidence there's a breach.
- ta1234567890 5y ago
  You are spot on. In fact my account had been inactive for almost a year when I got the suspension notice. Also, while active, I stopped accepting any of their automatic “improvement” suggestions, as they inevitably lead to increase spending, but almost never to better conversion. If I ever need to advertise with Google again, I’ll probably need to go through an agency and pay quite a bit extra.
- 55555 5y ago
  lol I doubt this very much. Facebook randomly banned someone recently who had spent 72 million dollars (?) over a continuous period of 11 years. Google is better but not that much better. I've spent millions on ads with G and Fb and have never even had a real rep.

twirlock 5y ago

>centralizes everything >is still useless >basically centralizes everything so it can become useless

tiagobraw 5y ago

I hate that there is no easy way to block or report a bad ad on google… don’t like that 30 minute ad in a 5 minutes video? too bad… don’t like that adult content ad on the middle of your daughter video? too bad.. not that you can use a different platform anyway

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

bambax 5y ago

Having used some kind of adblocking, on all devices, for as long as I can remember, I realize I live in an alternate universe where all these scams don't exist [0]. If at some point adblocking is defeated I'm up for a very difficult crash landing into reality. [0]: almost; top results can be scams of course; but it's rare.

RussianCow 5y ago
I had quite a rude awakening when I switched to an iPhone recently. I had to adopt NextDNS for its domain-level ad blocking, but it’s amazing how many ads still come through. I don’t know how people browse the web without any sort of ad blocking these days.
- zuppy 5y ago
  there are adblockers for ios too, for example here's a good one: https://1blocker.com https://1blocker.com
  - bobbylarrybobby 5y ago
    Safari only though
  - stephen_g 5y ago
    Yeah, I use 1blocker too, it's fairly good but annoying they only give you monthly rule updates (unless a major site breaks) unless you pay a subscription. Even when I bought the 'Pro' version, and then they changed to a subscription model... Still, it works pretty well. But how I wish it was possible to have uBlock Origin running in mobile Safari (and desktop Safari for that matter)...
    - pawsforapplase 5y ago
      They do have a one-time payment option of about $40. But in my experience, it simply does not work compared to other platforms. I still see a lot of ads even with their strictest settings, and it also seems to break a lot of sites without having any toggle switches in the browser UI. It's gotten to the point where I put the iPhone down and pick up another device if I need to access a website. After a few months, I'd like to just resell the phone. But on the social side of things, having a number with blue chat bubbles is a depressingly effective status symbol, and Apple is better about in-app tracking. It's getting hard to ignore how harmful the duopoly in phone operating systems is to consumers. Carrying two phones around is not a tenable solution.

tylerchilds 5y ago

[OC]: http://sanmateogov.org/ http://sanmateogov.org/

paxys 5y ago

Reason #11520 for why ad blocking on the internet is an absolute necessity.

amelius 5y ago
We should ban ads already.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  Or at least attach proper liability to them. If you promote a scam, you're considered complicit and liable for the underlying crime.
- Marsymars 5y ago
  I've actually moderated a bit over time. One of my favourite approaches is a regulatory approach that mandates that if you offer a free, ad-supported service, you must offer the service ad-free for a price, which is to be limited in proportion to what an ad-supported user is worth.

raister 5y ago

What's ironically is that the ads were paid with scam money, so it's like Google is in fact, part of the 'gang'... Crazy world! Most part of scams register names that looks like something legit, but, of course, no one seems to care who's buying what they're buying when registering domain names.

Joeri 5y ago
Google should commit to donating all funds received from ads that are later detected as scams to charity.
- Larrikin 5y ago
  In the case described in the article of government impersonation, I'd prefer a 10x fine.
  - pbhjpbhj 5y ago
    Shouldn't companies actively aiding fraud to the the tune of, I expect, $Billions have their executives go to jail and the company garnished of at least some percentage points of global revenue? Taking money to put fraudulent ads above legitimate results seems like it's not doing the minimum due diligence to skirt around a willful negligence accusation.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- josefx 5y ago
  That implies that Google has a right to money it makes from scams. Next up: Driver of getaway car gets to keep his share from robbery, will donate $10 to security guards widow.
  - namibj 5y ago
    No, it's separate. They donate whatever they received, without impact on their other obligations, like refunding victims or so.

ahelwer 5y ago

I fell prey to this. Might have been the exact same website, too. Had had a drink with dinner, thought heck why not file for my EIN for an independent consulting LLC I was creating? Was using a fresh OS install where I hadn't yet installed Firefox with an adblocker. Usual defenses were weakened. Boom, $250 down the drain before I really thought it all through. Fortunately I was able to get it refunded by initiating a chargeback and telling their website support that I believed they were misrepresenting themselves as the IRS. It really was a "welcome to the real world" moment, though - my very first act as a new business in the US was to get scammed. This theme has continued. 90% of the business mail I get are scams masquerading as official government mail to get business licenses or whatever. These websites are run by scumbags who should all be arrested. And Google, of course, should pay actual penalties because it's been all upside for them.

FriedrichN 5y ago
People think I'm paranoid checking domains, certificates, and bank numbers but it's a small price to pay as you found out. You lost $250, some lose thousands. This stuff needs to be regulated, companies like Google need to be held accountable for what they serve up to users. No more hiding behind this shield of "we're just a platform" when they damn well know they're the platform. It's all fun and games until your (grand)parents lose 20K to some scumbag scammers.
- exporectomy 5y ago
  As long as they actually provide the service they're advertising, it doesn't sound quite as bad as an actual scam. Reselling something at a markup but with better advertising is common in commerce. Up to the customer to decide if the price is what they're willing to pay. It's only government services that have a kind of aura of "don't be a dick" around them, maybe because people feel they can trust them not to be profit driven.
  - yarcob 5y ago
    It's definitely a scam. They do not "provide a service", they mislead you into thinking you are dealing with a government office and that you are paying an official fee. This is not "better advertising", it's just a scam.

Ayesh 5y ago

Vietnam government is also impersonated in organic results. Google "Vietnam visa government website", and you will see a result from "govt.vn" as the too result. That is not the official web site, but neither Vietnamese NIC nor google didn't find a problem with it.

ollybee 5y ago

This does not seem be a problem in the UK, searches topics that might be prone to this all seem to give the correct .gov.uk site as the first result with no ads that could be described as misleading. I wonder if the UK government, advertising standards agencies and trading standards authorities have put more pressure on google? Or perhaps the legal landscape here makes it untenable to operate such a scam business.

eloisius 5y ago
Probably not as lucrative as targeting Americans. I’ve noticed a nice side affect of living in Taiwan to be that there is generally less trash to sift through when looking for this kind of stuff. Spammers just don’t target us as much.
xfz 5y ago
They still pop up in the UK like a rash that won't go away. https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/jun/16/once-again-copycat-sites-creep-back-to-the-top-of-google https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/jun/16/once-again-cop...
andylynch 5y ago
I was going to say there used to be (home office applications come to mind), but searching for something like ‘SORN’ still returns 5 scammy ads above the real page you need (but the more common V5C doesn’t. I do think gov.uk has improved this compared to the past. I also noticed the uk govt is running google ads for some keywords themselves.
Closi 5y ago
My first attempt, “tv license”, brings back a form-filling service above the real one too. I think Google has really increased the number of in-search ads recently. It used to be that they were obvious and at the top/side, now they look like regular results and often fill up the whole first page. IMO they know they are dominant enough in the market now that they can get away with providing garbage results for some short term profit, and will just dial it back if viable competitors come along to stop anyone else entering the market.

kevinventullo 5y ago

I saw the same thing recently with renewing TSA PreChek. The top result is not the government website, but some shady middleman which seems to charge 3x to do the same thing (while also siphoning your personal information incl. passport number). It was a bit jarring, I got very far in the process before realizing something was off. Made me realize how much trust I was implicitly putting into my search engine.

Sparkyte 5y ago

My personal opinion is that Google should be held liable for allowing Ads to do so.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

Always block all ads. Make absolutely no exceptions. There is no reason to feel guilty about doing this.

vimacs2 5y ago
Absolutely. I consider unsolicited ads a form of violence and laugh at anybody who even tries to shame me into watching any of them. As for the accusation of effectively stealing content via refusing to allow for their (shitty) form of monetisation, unless in the rare case that a company is a workers cooperative, I don't want to hear any bullshit about robbery when you are purposely extracting surplus value out of your workers without democratic agency or fair compensation.
tantalor 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
- Marsymars 5y ago
  Well there are a few ways to think of that. If you consider the cognitive load of people as the limited resource, ad displayers showing ads in their own self-interest are acting against the common good.

bencollier49 5y ago

I noticed that this is happening in the UK the other day. There are firms of lawyers (are they?) creating clones of the free Citizen's Advice service and marketing it via Google Ads. Slimy stuff.

dom111 5y ago
Yeah, the one that caught my Mum recently was a "form filling service" for changing your driving license address. It sucks as it scams money out of people that probably don't have that much in the first place. Shortly after this she started getting additional scam calls/texts too, although this could be entirely unrelated...
- bencollier49 5y ago
  Doubt it - these sorts of companies are very keen on people who are known to be susceptible.
  - mellavora 5y ago
    you mean Republicans?

insta_anon 5y ago

I have a hard time trying to understand why governments don’t address these scams more proactively. There is a related issue when you register a new company here in Germany: As soon as the new entity is added to the company house (called “Handelsregister”), you will start to receive fake invoices from scam companies. These invoice look very similar to official ones and some even use the official seal of the state (see https://www.firma.de/en/company-formation/beware-of-fake-handelsregister-invoices/ https://www.firma.de/en/company-formation/beware-of-fake-han... for examples). If you don’t pay close attention you can easily mistake these invoice for official ones. This scam is quite well-known and has been going on for years. To further add to the insult - the companies that send these fake invoices are usually German entities as well, not some obscure shell companies in remote islands and yet besides warnings from the government it seems that little is happening. I find it infuriating and don’t understand why it is even allowed to send another party that you never had any relation with an invoice for a service that you actually haven’t performed yet.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
There's a similar scam in place in Poland, and its continued existence confuses me too. I don't remember getting any invoices after registering my company, but I got spammed with letters telling me to pay a fee to register my company on some listing, and some of those messages did their best to make it seem they're a continuation of the official process. The deception goes as far as these companies being named in a way that sounds government-ish, and their addresses being at the same street in Warsaw (the capital) some government buildings are. The infuriating part is that it's so well-known, that both the physical government offices and the online forms where you can register your small business, are plastered with big, attention-grabbing reminders that the registration process is free. The government knows about this scam to the point of warning people about it, and yet it continues.
nneonneo 5y ago
Well, the FTC is _trying_, at least. They took action against On Point Global (https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings/x130054/point-global-llc https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings/x130054/po...) which operated a big network of DMV-lookalike sites. If you tried to Google for renewing your drivers license, you'd get sent to one of these sites, which looked like it would help you renew your license but would actually just charge you approx. $15 to download a PDF guide on how to use the real government website. There's a certain threshold of complaints, unfortunately. The FTC only has the resources to go after big fish. But, one thing I did learn from reading the FTC complaint is that credit card chargebacks do work, after a fashion; the company was getting repeatedly booted off of merchant accounts for accruing lots of chargebacks. I bet if people aggressively charged back the EIN scammers it'd end up hurting them too.

rapht 5y ago

These kinds of articles always boil down to how Google are not doing their job properly anymore, be it by presenting results that do not include scams, content farms and the like, or by systematically pushing ads (including dubious ones) over organic results, all in the interest of their ad business. I'm probably not technical enough, but I'm always left wondering how no one created a 'bettergoogle.com' that makes a query to google from the client side and applies an array of filters to google's output, starting by removing the ads and the results from any known bad actors. Could also be a browser extension but that makes it difficult on mobile.

underwater 5y ago
Because Google would sue them out of existence?
- rightbyte 5y ago
  If you could sue Google for search ranking Google would go bankrupt.

habosa 5y ago

Clearly these should be banned because they violate Google's policy, so I don't argue that. But on a more general level, I don't really have a problem with companies offering to fill out government forms for me in exchange for my money. For instance last year I fought a traffic ticket by myself. It's not hard, but you do have to fill out like 3 different forms and mail them in. Totally free besides the stamps. There are many many "ticket fighting" companies which charge you $100 to get you out of a ticket. They act like they're lawyers but really they just fill these forms out for you. If I had to do it again, I'd pay the $100 for the convenience. How do we decide who is a scam and who is improving the experience of interacting with the government? How much friction do you have to remove before it's OK to charge? Clearly the mail forwarding ones are a scam (it's super easy through USPS) and, in my opinion, the ticket fighting ones are not a scam. So the line is somewhere in between those two poles.

wccrawford 5y ago
The real ones don't make it look like you're on the official site. They clearly lay out what they're doing and why they charge what they charge. It's not a scam if the customer is properly informed of the situation.
Macha 5y ago
I think companies who are legitimately about making the process easier can avoid can make that clear in their naming and marketing - "Foobar traffic appeals service - We make fighting tickets easier, 80% success rate" is hard to mistake for the government, while "Traffic Appeals Service, file your traffic appeal here" is a lot harder to notice that you're using a third party

jacquesm 5y ago

This is what you get when search engines and advertising companies are one and the same. The only reason this happens is because the search unit has prioritized ads and google ad revenue generating results.

Mauricebranagh 5y ago

Its harder than it looks to solve this problem. And its also not that simple to weed out bad actors when normally the government sites that should rank are probably hopeless and the senior civil servants in charge knowledge of the web is “in need of some improvement” Google and Bing could turn up the YMYL (“your money or your life” ) knob but they would also need to employ higher paid local people to vet these sorts of ads. Stricter KYC (Know Your Customer) could be required to run online adverts is another solution. Pre covid I got pitched a grade 7/6 (v senior O-6 /GS15 ) job for the DWP to sort out the technical seo side. Looking at these scam sites in search would have been a priority had that gone anywhere – maybe set up some meetings with Matt Cutts and discuss a joint us / uk approach. Maybe I should follow that job up.

tacticalDonut 5y ago
I've tried pitching similar roles in Government on the DoD side of the house for knowledge workers like Software Dev and Data Scientists. It's hard to get traction though when the folks making the decisions feel threatened that a 25 year old is going to be making the same as them and be the same "rank". I think part of the solution needs to be creating it on a separate scale than GS, similar to an SL or ST position, but geared specifically towards knowledge workers. That's a solution that would probably require congressional involvement though...
- Mauricebranagh 5y ago
  Probably not going to work for 25 year old junior developers at the more senior levels you need to be aware of the political side. But its is a problem your not going to attract many B+ candidates if your so far behind industry. About 3 years ago one uk org (I wont say which one) tried pitching people on linked in I got the pitch and so did a mate who's ex military he laughed and said "not on those poverty wages"
  - tacticalDonut 5y ago
    Yeah, the problem is that the US Government is trying to hire developers in at GS11 positions (~$72k salary in high cost of living area). Never going to get good junior devs at that price point. Don't get me started on security clearance requirements in addition to low wages... The fix is to provide competitive wages, but the politics of it is difficult.

stevenicr 5y ago

I saw similar happen to my mom a few years back. She googled something like 'mail new social security card' - clicked the first result and started entering information. About 4 screens in she asked me to look at it - and we could both tell that it was likely not an official gov site at that point. was first result in google so she trusted it - it looked similar enough to a gov site to go with the easy onboarding flow.. a few details like name and addy - then submit - next screen a few more bits of info.. submit next screen - real gold like maiden name, name of dog, - they already captured the social on the first screen.. some months later the irs is telling her she needs a pin code and that her identity appears to be hacked or whatever.. no surprise. I long for the day when the faint piss-yellow box surrounded paid listings.. the engineers that came up with that perfect yellow that may show on a good desktop monitor / and in a presentation to the ftc/cpb/congress - whatever.. yet faded out on a laptop screen - and when the sun hits.. and yet as great as that was at being essentially invisible to most users - they still did away it - lets assume because it caused more clicks.. a/b testing and all the s valley bs. I had forgotten about that incident until I saw this headline - might be time enough to still ad a note about this on a reply to a different HN article a week ago - where someone said "I've never seen any evidence of anyone hurt by the large scale collection of personal data by Google and FB." - ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27064382 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27064382 ) ( Part of the discussion in regards to the article Why I Work on Ads - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27060898 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27060898 ) This is indeed another good example of damage done by the ad selling overlords. Now remembering stopping people from clicking the 'first result' for "flash player" - on so many devices, so many times - that ad was a two click malware install - of course it was a paid ad - sigh - people just don't know and google's been exploiting that for a long time.

aitchnyu 5y ago

Pet idea. All ads must lead to landing pages which lists name and address of ad broker, buyer, what the product is supposed to do and option to flag. Lots of people can't tell whats ad and whats content. Won't happen voluntarily, when Youtube ads directly leads to Play Store.

easytiger 5y ago

Just wait until you see the Google ads in Africa region. Literal scams. No subtlety. Like something from the 90s

pizzaknife 5y ago

Where does H&R Block and other tax prep services fall into this? Arent they (more or less) simply collecting a fee for handling otherwise "free" processes provided by the state and federal governments? Not suggesting these nefarious actors, who rely on ignorance of the consumer, arent a problem

AlexandrB 5y ago
Tax prep services have taken this game plan and gone major league by lobbying the government to prevent free, simple tax filing: https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-free-simple-hr-block-intuit-lobbying-against-it https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-fre...
sjg007 5y ago
They don’t mislead customers saying that they are the IRS. I view my CPA as a domain expert anyway so while I could do my own taxes and have done so in the past.. but I agree the IRS already basically knows everything.

black6 5y ago

Google, Mozilla, et alia have trained people to not enter "www.whitehouse.gov" into the combined search/url bar, but simply "white house", and then to click on one of the links that shows up in search results, because this behavior increases clicks on their ads. It's shameful. Businesses used to list the URL for their company website. Now it's "find us on facebag!"

hansvm 5y ago
To be fair, I'm more likely to get the official site in the presence of a typo via a search engine. In the case of .gov it doesn't matter as much since it's a tiny bit difficult to spoof them, but typo squatters are a problem for the rest of the web.

jgalt212 5y ago

PSA: https://sec.report/ https://sec.report/ is not the URL for the SEC EDGAR database which is actually located here: https://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html https://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html

hansvm 5y ago

One thing I noticed switching to a custom DNS server on my phone is that search ads are a little hard to identify on mobile nowadays, and I find myself accidentally clicking them up to a few times per week (the mistake is immediately apparent because the site won't load).

jonnycomputer 5y ago

In the traditional ad business, each ad would have been reviewed at least once. No reason Google shouldn't be held responsible and to the same standard.

doggodaddo78 5y ago

I'm waiting for AI email with phone bots in concert to commit automated identity theft and Medicare fraud.

dcdc123 5y ago

This is a really good argument not to "allow unobtrusive ads" in your adblocker. This is an example of an ad that would be allowed. Just FYI this is the default behavior of some adblockers, notably Adblock Plus.

tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
The other reason not to allow it (and to replace Adblock Plus with e.g. uBlock Origin) is that Adblock Plus decided they like money more than actually limiting themselves to unobtrusive ads, and were allowing the disgusting Taboola/Outbrain/Clickbrain clickbait (not sure which of the three it was, all the same garbage) to be shown. The best part was that some websites had two versions, one more aggressive one, and a slightly toned down one. If you didn't have an adblocker, you got the first one. If you did, you got the second one, because apparently the ABP people did draw the line somewhere.
- treesprite82 5y ago
  I believe it's Taboola, Outbrain, and Revcontent (possibly more since I last checked). https://i.imgur.com/1OGHbAW.png https://i.imgur.com/1OGHbAW.png https://i.imgur.com/4r7PAl7.png https://i.imgur.com/4r7PAl7.png (some slightly NSFW content in these example images:) https://i.imgur.com/ZF9G7fZ.png https://i.imgur.com/ZF9G7fZ.png https://i.imgur.com/hkkvuXd.png https://i.imgur.com/hkkvuXd.png https://i.imgur.com/1N2o3QT.png https://i.imgur.com/1N2o3QT.png uBlock Origin with Firefox is definitely the way to go now: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

kabdib 5y ago

I was looking at health insurance in WA state, and the sites that imitate the official government site do a pretty good job at everything except having decent, non-scammy insurance offerings.

dehrmann 5y ago

Some of this has to be tied to the evolution of ads in SERPs. They've gone from being on the right rail in a different format and different colors to being in the results, with with a perpetually lightning yellow background so you know it's sponsored. Currently, I the only meaningful difference is it says "Ad." I used to work for a comparison shopping engine. The traffic was a mix of paid and organic search. We thought about using paid traffic to test page titles and descriptions for organic pages because it's not like users could tell the difference.

PostThisTooFast 5y ago

Google is full of shit. Remember when they pledged to "punish" sites that weren't "mobile-friendly," but then DISABLED ZOOMING on their own mobile site? "You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks." Why don't you FUCK OFF, Hacker News? Once per hour is "too fast?" What a bunch of pompous fucking pricks. Our time isn't free, assholes.

kordlessagain 5y ago

Ads are a toxic and cancerous model. They need to be banned, regulated or competed out of business.

tyingq 5y ago

15 hours have passed, and Google hasn't shut it down yet. Hrm. https://imgur.com/a/AT8F5WC https://imgur.com/a/AT8F5WC

dkersten 5y ago

This is one of the reasons I have such a low opinion of Google and people who work on adtech. Google has served me adverts for misinformation, scams, malware, exploitative mobile games, gambling, religious crap, porn and incest porn games. Google and Youtube ads are absolute garbage and so is Google for serving them.

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ImNotSurprized 5y ago

Not surprizing

thrwhizzle 5y ago

I am absolutely unable to understand how a ban isn’t being followed. I have been under the impression that when legislators make something illegal it instantly goes away. Now my entire worldview is being challenged.