Google has been accused of failing to act for months against cryptocurrency scams with fake articles allegedly published through a national newspaper.
Activists said the studio giant hadn’t stopped scammers from advertising non-existent investments in bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies, despite repeated warnings about scams.
One ad, which gave the impression on the most sensible of the page when users search Google for investment-related inquiries, refers to a fake article in the Daily Mirror, which claims to be an interview with Britain’s youngest millionaire detailing how he made his fortune.
The headline reads: “Brit surprised everyone by revealing the app that generates £23,000 a month. “When users click, they are directed to a site that promises to make millions and a set of rules that automatically trades on the cryptocurrency markets.
The ad is a screenshot of Philip Schofield and Holly Willoughby doing an interview on This Morning.
Scammers use photographs of celebrities in an attempt to give unsuspecting consumers false assurances that classified ads are reliable.
Martin Lewis, founder of Money Saving Expert, issued warnings after his face was used in fake classified ads on Facebook claiming to offer dicy binary exchanges, PUP recovery and bitcoin.
BBC customer credit reporter Paul Lewis tweeted last month that he had noticed his face in fake cryptocurrency news articles that gave the impression that Yahoo was looking for results.
He wrote: “I have never bought cryptocurrencies and I advise you not to do so. You can lose all your money. “
Mark Taber, an activist who opposes online fraud, said he had reported the fake Mirror scam to Google.
It has also reported many other scams to the Financial Conduct Authority, so this year, however, it claims that the regulator has only acted to warn consumers in a small minority of cases and, where it has, acted too late.
“This fake Mirror article, the bitcoin scam, Holly Willoughby, has been around on Google Ads for months,” Taber said.
“I have reported this several times, but no effective measures have been taken to prevent it from reappearing repeatedly. This suggests that Google is unwilling or unable to comply with its own policies. “
Google said it had taken “appropriate action” against the sites it was informed of, but did not specify what action it took in this case.
A spokesperson for the company said: “Google has had strict policies related to the type of content allowed to serve classified classified ads on our platform. We temporarily remove all classified ads that violate those rules.
Companies that record internet addresses for sites that run fraudulent bitcoin classified ads, in some cases, have got rid of those sites.
However, the same content was copied and pasted in a new direction. New domain names can be registered anonymously in minutes, with the same provider.
In July, the Faux Mirror article was discovered on the-bitcoin. net that was registered in March through Namecheap, a domain calling provider.
When Taber informed Namecheap that his service had been used through scammers, the company shut down the site and reappeared shortly after in the-crypto-news. co. uk, Namecheap also recorded. this website.
On Tuesday, the same scam discovered alongside Google looks for effects to “compare high-yield investments. “It had moved to a new Internet management registered through some other domain registrar.
A Namecheap spokesman said it was “completely wrong” to recommend that the company has benefited from the use of its scammers.
“By context, last year we investigated more than 1. 2 million frauds.
“Of all those reported instances of fraud, Namecheap was able to determine the abuse of approximately 65,000 complaints. We discovered another 24,000 verified instances of abuse that we learned about through our own proactive internal anti-fraud efforts. “
Namecheap has recently allowed consumers to pay for the registration of a domain cryptocurrency, which helps keep transactions anonymous.
Google claims to determine the identity of advertisers on its platform who advertise monetary products, but declined to say it had reported suspected scams to police.
Taber said the latest bitcoin scam is further proof of the desire to make sure the government cracks down on online advertising on the online security bill that makes its way through Parliament.
The government said the bill “would lead the way to keeping the internet for everyone,” but it doesn’t include measures to protect millions of other people from the growing risk of scams and fraud.
Police knowledge shows that reports of investment fraud, in which savers are convinced they are investing their cash in high-risk or non-existent investments, have more than tripled in the last five years. Meanwhile, convictions are rare, and police forces are complaining. that their resources to investigate fraud have been exhausted.
Convictions under the Fraud Act have fallen to their lowest point since 2007 last year, with one of the 700 reported cases now effectively prosecuted.
The number of convictions has decreased every year since 2011, from a high of 9,095 to a low of 3,453 in 2020.
Debbie Barton, an expert in preventing money crime at estate manager Quilter, said the figures sound the alarm for government ministers.
“From questionable forex and cryptocurrency trading systems to non-existent investment bonds, fraud lurks everywhere, especially and on social media.
“However, instead of seeing a slight increase in the number of fraud convictions corresponding to the immediate backlog in action fraud reports, we found otherwise. Fraud convictions have fallen since 2011 to levels not seen since the law was introduced.
Both Barton and Taber argued that tech giants like Google and Facebook will have to take greater legal responsibility for the advertising that generates the maximum of their multimillion-dollar profits.
“A smart start to protecting the public would be for the government to include other [types of fraud] in the online security bill so that tech corporations have legal responsibility to combat the damage done on their sites and will have to take over. monitor the online world looking for scams.
While a newspaper editor is to blame for the content of ads, Google, which generates more cash from advertising than any other company in the world, lately is responsible in the same way.
The search giant claims it’s a platform, not a publisher, and it’s not guilty in the same way.