Thursday, May 8, 2014

Internet Giants Come Together to Attack Ad Scams

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Internet giants; Google, Facebook, Twitter and AOL have come together with a campaign to protect users from malicious online advertisements.

More ads, more pop-ups, and more annoyances are overpopulating the internet.

Online ads have been reported as dangerous phishing scams and tech support rip-offs.

These Internet companies have launched TrustInAds.org this past Thursday.

The campaign is designed to raise consumer awareness of emerging online advertising scams.

This will allow companies to share information on the misleading ads and their trends.


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Ads on Google and Facebook are usually legitimate and trusted, although there are ingenious scammers that will go great lengths to fool you.

Fake businesses, deceptive websites, and phony voice-mail messages are created to dupe users into believing their company is legitimate.
“However, there are some very sophisticated bad actors out there trying to game the system.  This is something companies deal with on a very regular basis,” stated the group’s executive director, Rob Haralson.

The organization has plans to release reports on the stats of the new online ad scams as well as information for the consumers on how to protect themselves.

The group’s first report focused on fraudulent online tech support schemes.  Google and Facebook employees found that scammers were placing display ads that lured consumers into calling 1-800 numbers for tech support.  After they would contact the “tech support” for help, consumers were then lured into downloading software which is a keystroke logger and other malicious software on their PCs.

The companies have removed 4,000 suspicious accounts linking to 2,400 tech support websites.

The FTC has issued a consumer bulletin warning about online tech support scams in January.

This has been an ongoing problem because scammers are constantly working on outsmarting consumers and coming up with new scams.

What do you think about the tech giants coming together?  I think this should have been done a long time
ago, maybe identity theft wouldn’t be so prominent today if this was done at the brink of cyberattacks.

Go to TrustInAds.org to find out more!

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References:

Internet Firms Launch Effort to Expose Deceptive Ads – Recode
http://recode.net/2014/05/07/internet-firms-launch-effort-to-expose-deceptive-ads/

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