Fake MapQuest scam issue still unaddressed by Google

3 points

7 years ago

I regularly deal with senior citizens who want to use MapQuest, and who are regularly inundated with malicious browser extensions trying to do so. This isn't because MapQuest is malicious, but because Google refuses to address the volume of scams perpetrated by their ad platform, and continues to make ads difficult to distinguish from real results.

I've spoken to Google employees here on HN about this issue previous years, and they have even said if reported they'd be taken down, but even when those Googlers intervened, they returned shortly only hours later, at the exact same URLs as before.

None of these scams are new. They're just too profitable to Google to be shut down.

Here's a screenshot from today: https://imgur.com/a/CxAH2Ua