Back in the old days it was somewhat common knowledge that the internet is a bad place and you should be careful (I was told to never share my name or any PII o

Back in the old days it was somewhat common knowledge that the internet is a bad place and you should be careful (I was told to never share my name or any PII online for example). Furthermore spam & scams weren't considered respectable business models, so the IT industry was generally against them; no reputable company would promote such things or engage in such practices, so scams were mostly relegated to Nigerian princes in your email inbox or other user-generated-content areas. No reputable company would intentionally promote such things, either out of common decency or a belief (whether true at the time or not) that doing otherwise would land them in legal trouble. The problem is that spam/scams are actually a very good business and people being careful/suspicious online is bad for said business. Big companies (that people would normally not associate with shady activity, due to a mistaken belief that laws apply to big companies) are now taking part in the action with first-party spam/scams (ads, sponsored or "suggested" content) and doing everything possible to give a false sense of security to users so they drop their guard (or grow up to never have that guard to begin with).