4 ms·

They're not trying. I've seen an advertiser remain active for months with literally tens of thousands of ads where clicking them directly downloads a malicious

They're not trying. I've seen an advertiser remain active for months with literally tens of thousands of ads where clicking them directly downloads a malicious exe file that most antivirus scanners flag.

nkrisc 6mo ago
They make money on those ads, you’re asking a mega corporation to make less money. Good luck.
loopdoend 6mo ago
Tech support scams still?! I don't even understand how this is possible. If Google wanted to they could come up with the tech to bypass the spam/scammers own ghosting system. They must have some kind of invisible Google bot that checks for downloads/scams, right? Phone providers should also be detecting this with AI. There is no way this should be occurring anymore.
canadapups 6mo ago
They're definitely not trying - in any form. I run a marketplace for dogs (i.e. craigslist for puppies & dogs) and scammers are always trying to post fakes ads. They always use Gmail accounts. Every time I ban a gmail address, they scammers will just get a new one. Same scammer/person has created thousands of gmail accounts and Google doesn't care. I have reported this to Google. For the amount of info Google has on people, trivial for them to prevent some of this.
- pixl97 6mo ago
  Until a scammer uses some of your information then you get banned from Google with no way to appeal.
- eudamoniac 6mo ago
  Shadowbans work much better for this purpose
- FireBeyond 6mo ago
  Meanwhile, because I've worked for several startups who have used Google Workspaces, if I (try to) open a new Google account, phone verification fails because my phone number "has been used too many times". Some places suggest "try logging into Google with your phone number, and deleting the account that's associated, if you don't need", that just ... doesn't work.
tristor 6mo ago
Worse, they're actively working to allow malicious activity. Meta made 10% of it's revenue, around $16B from known scams: https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortune-deluge-fraudulent-ads-documents-show-2025-11-06/ https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortu...
mcmcmc 6mo ago
Why would they? Their ad dollars spend the same, and they have no incentive to police it when they are protected by section 230. Edit: I’m not implying this is morally right or good for anyone but Google shareholders. This is just 21st Century American capitalism
delfinom 6mo ago
We had that issue of someone advertising fake clones of our sites specifically to push fake malware ridden payloads. We only got it handled by bugging internal contacts at Google. It sucked and worse we had to bug them for weeks because the attacker was churning through multiple domains and probably over 100 breached Ad accounts by the time they stopped

nkrisc 6mo ago

They make money on those ads, you’re asking a mega corporation to make less money. Good luck.

loopdoend 6mo ago

Tech support scams still?! I don't even understand how this is possible. If Google wanted to they could come up with the tech to bypass the spam/scammers own ghosting system. They must have some kind of invisible Google bot that checks for downloads/scams, right? Phone providers should also be detecting this with AI. There is no way this should be occurring anymore.

canadapups 6mo ago

They're definitely not trying - in any form. I run a marketplace for dogs (i.e. craigslist for puppies & dogs) and scammers are always trying to post fakes ads. They always use Gmail accounts. Every time I ban a gmail address, they scammers will just get a new one. Same scammer/person has created thousands of gmail accounts and Google doesn't care. I have reported this to Google. For the amount of info Google has on people, trivial for them to prevent some of this.

pixl97 6mo ago
Until a scammer uses some of your information then you get banned from Google with no way to appeal.
eudamoniac 6mo ago
Shadowbans work much better for this purpose
FireBeyond 6mo ago
Meanwhile, because I've worked for several startups who have used Google Workspaces, if I (try to) open a new Google account, phone verification fails because my phone number "has been used too many times". Some places suggest "try logging into Google with your phone number, and deleting the account that's associated, if you don't need", that just ... doesn't work.

tristor 6mo ago

Worse, they're actively working to allow malicious activity. Meta made 10% of it's revenue, around $16B from known scams: https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortune-deluge-fraudulent-ads-documents-show-2025-11-06/ https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortu...

mcmcmc 6mo ago

Why would they? Their ad dollars spend the same, and they have no incentive to police it when they are protected by section 230. Edit: I’m not implying this is morally right or good for anyone but Google shareholders. This is just 21st Century American capitalism

delfinom 6mo ago

We had that issue of someone advertising fake clones of our sites specifically to push fake malware ridden payloads. We only got it handled by bugging internal contacts at Google. It sucked and worse we had to bug them for weeks because the attacker was churning through multiple domains and probably over 100 breached Ad accounts by the time they stopped