Google Sues Dodgy Advertisers 71
angry tapir writes "Google is at its wit's end dealing with illegal sellers of prescription drugs that market medicines on its ad network, so it has decided to take some of these allegedly rogue advertisers to court. Rogue prescription drug sellers have increased in number and become more sophisticated in their dealings, and 'a small percentage' of them have been able to dodge Google's efforts to block them from running ads on its network, according to the company."
Wait... (Score:3, Interesting)
Start Naming Names Why Not? (Score:5, Insightful)
How do I order?
Talk to Dr. William E. Morrow of Layton, Utah who signed for thousands of prescriptions [cnn.com] that two of Kyle Rootsaert's pharmacies filled. From that article:
CNN's Special Investigations Unit first examined Rootsaert and Roots Pharmacy, the company he owns in American Fork, in 2008. CNN Correspondent Drew Griffin ordered the antidepressant Prozac over the internet without a doctor's prescription, and the pills were delivered by overnight express the following day.
The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and FBI are very very interested in all of this and as the article notes, Google is quick to show they're on the government's side regarding these pharmacies. Google faces very low risk (alleging breach of AdWords contracts allowing others to back out of contracts) while reducing its liability exposure by way of this lawsuit if any of the 49 "John Doe" owned sites face criminal investigation.
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Yeah.. they should give back the money to the people they're suing.
Because with any other service providers, of any type, they give back money when the customer violates the terms of service. Oh wait.. they don't. They give you the boot, maybe take you to court, and keep the money.
Maybe you didn't think anything but "ZOMG GOOGLE! MUST BASH THEM!" If only we could put down the rabid trolls...
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So they should give up the money..but not to any one in particular.
Are you retarded?
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How are they really going to prevent it from happening? They can stop it after they know about it, but they couldn't prevent it without requiring human review of every single ad is created.
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That's fine for text, but what about graphical ads?
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One word (sort of...) Captcha
Name any one of those "must prevent robots and low IQ humans too" type in what you see graphic programs and someone will be able to name a counter. Image recognition AI techniques are quite a bit more capable than most would believe.
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How are they really going to prevent it from happening? They can stop it after they know about it, but they couldn't prevent it without requiring human review of every single ad is created.
Protip: Every single fucking ad they push through their network SHOULD BE HUMAN-REVIEWED.
Why do you think the fucking internet is so insecure? 99% of all active shitware originates from MALICIOUS ADS.
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Google already scans web pages for malware and bad stuff and warns people "this site could be dangerous".
If they aren't already running the "bad sites" database against the ad database (and blocking any ads that link to or reference content from a bad page) then they should be. Any ad web site that starts serving malware (either deliberatly or because of a hack) would have their ads removed from display until they fix their site to stop serving malware.
Legitimate-but-hacked sites would therefore have an inc
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There is a clear conflict of interest.
Google makes money by pushing ads through.
Every ad it rejects, every warning it throws up to users, and every advertiser it cuts off, means less money for Google.
We already know it is ABSOLUTELY NOT the case that:
"Any ad web site that starts serving malware (either deliberatly or because of a hack) would have their ads removed from display until they fix their site to stop serving malware."
Compromised sites are compromised in the first place because of malicious ads.
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Well, what you should do is commit insurance fraud to really test that hypothesis. Then after you've been caught and convicted ask for your money back.
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Because with any other service providers, of any type, they give back money when the customer violates the terms of service. Oh wait.. they don't. They give you the boot, maybe take you to court, and keep the money.
Actually, for any service that's terminated, typically by law you are pro-rated on your payment. For example, I pay car insurance in 6mo increments. When I decided to switch insurers, by law, my former agency was not allowed to keep 5mo of payments. Even if I did something that caused them to terminate my policy. I was pro-rated on 5 of the 6 months I paid, and received a check for that amount.
If only we could put down the rabid idiots.
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I would bet that if your car insurance was terminated because you torched your car to collect on your policy, the insurance company wouldn't have to refund you any part of your paid premiums.
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In that case any refunds would get absorbed in fines.
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In theory, GP is correct.
However, if you commit insurance fraud you're most likely going to be hit with more than enough fines to make up for any refunds the insurance company owes you.
Also, the policy may have a clause that causes forfeiture of unused premiums in the event of fraud.
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Also, the policy may have a clause that causes forfeiture of unused premiums in the event of fraud.
I'm betting this would be the case, and I'd bet that any law obligating an insurer to reimburse premiums pro rata would have a similar exception. Of course, ymmv.
google ads (Score:2, Insightful)
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Google's ads have been pointless for a long time.
That maybe your opinion, but it's not the fact.
I don't understand how they make as much revenue as they do with ads that no one, or at least not anyone I know clicking on them.
Because people are clicking on them, and they are anything but pointless and have been for a long time. Your denial doesn't change this fact.
he ads are mostly spam and scams.
That's such a dumb statement that it doesn't even pass the smell test.
Their text format is bad too.
You lost me there.
or I'll unknowingly read a paid for review.
Wait a second... you're clicking on ADVERTISEMENT and you're complaining that what you end up reading was PAID FOR?! /boggle
A few key word lines of text doesn't have the click me afpeal that oither ad options do. It is about time they cleaned up their advertisers and made them more relevent.
Again, you're clearly not either A) the norm or B) an expert on this subject. You're claiming your personal pr
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I have to agree with him tho. No one I know clicks the ads. They click the search results provided by google.
Perhaps it is like telemarketing where they only need less than .10% of the calls to be successful to break even. that's basically "no one".
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My boss will regularly click the "Sponsored Link" in his google search result thinking that it's a legitimate search result.
It's not out of the question that people click that Sponsored Link thinking it's a real result, finds that it is the solution to whatever problem they were having (albeit not the best or most cost-effective solution), and make the purchase.
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Re:google ads (Score:5, Informative)
On TV I see adverts for all sorts of thing which are never going to be of any interest to me, my friends, or family, but there are several million other people who will lap it up.
On another note, I'm actually finding some adverts I see on my Android phone to be much more relevant to me due to the location awareness that comes with a mobile device. Yes, I know Google gathers even more data about me when it also knows where I am, etc, but hey, I just saw my local pizza restaurant has 2 for 1 today. Now, that is useful.
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Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population.
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Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population.
That's rule #17.
Rule #0 is http://goat.cx/ [goat.cx]
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Do you have Google's tracking disabled some how?
I get very good targeted adds from NewEgg, Amazon, Stables, and other well known places via Google. And usually the the adds are targeted to what I'm searching and does a pretty good job at it.
Spam and scams? I didn't know Newegg was in the business of scamming.
Their text format is bad? The ads I see are extremely easy to read, stands out just enough to notice but not enough to annoy and a quick glance is all I need to see what the ads is for.
You rarely click
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Compared though to the internet masses, even you sir are comparatively a genius.
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I do occasionally see ads I'm interested in, but sometimes they get a bit creepy.
For example, I'm looking for a house near where I live. I used a particular website to look for properties. The next day I go to youtube to listen to some music, and on the right it's got a flash ad from the property website, showing houses for sale exactly where I was looking and in the price range. I was actually interested in a few of the properties that it showed and click on a few. But the whole thing was a bit unnervi
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Hi, I'm a Slashdot reader, a computer hacker, and I click on Google ads.
Real example from this week: I search for Lightscribe DVD-Rs. Google shows me some ads from companies that sell them. I click the ads to check out their prices and selection.
Sure, I don't click on ads that appear randomly when I'm not looking to buy something,
I KNEW it.... (Score:1)
Wrong way to do it? (Score:3, Interesting)
From reading the article, it seems that they are suing for breach of the AdWords contract. This seems unlikely to me to shut down the illegal pharmacies, unless Google is paying investigators to actually do business with the pharmacies and track them down "in real life" --- in which case, why not just give the evidence they obtain to the applicable LEOs?
I suppose one doesn't prevent the other, but the article doesn't at all address this possibility, in fact, it spins the story like Google might be doing this for CYA in case law enforcement catches these guys all by themselves.
Re:Wrong way to do it? (Score:4, Interesting)
However, it is pretty amazing that the response is a lawsuit. I would think that Google, of all people, would be able to filter them out.
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Somehow, my brain read this as "... --- in which case, why not just use the evidence they obtain to sent them to an applicable LEO (as in, low-earth orbit)?
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Next thing you know, hosting providers will be scanning machines for the occurrence of the HDCP key on discs.
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The problem is really no different from the spam problem ISPs have faced for years.
The crooks set up a company with a domain and address. They sign up for Google Adwords. Then they use their Adwords account to send out illegal ads, in breach of the contract they agreed to. Chances are they don't pay for the ads either. When Google yanks the ads, the crooks fold the company and start the whole exercise again.
Google have few options here. If they do nothing, crooks continue to abuse their service in this way,
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Editors ... (Score:5, Informative)
... please do some editing! There is no need to link to another website when you can go directly to the source [blogspot.com]!
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If the OP read the news from a site that links to the source, I would think it ethical to link to that site instead of directly to the source since the OP should be giving credit to the site that notified him of the story.
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Not at all. It is ethical and customary to credit your source, but link directly to the site.
AdBlock (Score:1)
Will Weight-Loss Ads Be Next? (Score:1, Interesting)
Whenever I turn-off my ad-blocker, I get those annoying ads with cartoony images of before-and-after fatties, it aggravates me so much that I don't feel sorry for blocking these sites' revenues... I hope they get banned next.
When will Yahoo start policing their ads? (Score:2)
I've seen a ton of dodgy ads for penny stocks and the like on their service lately.
Friend of mine buys this way. (Score:3, Interesting)
The price is 1/10th retail.
The drugs are effective and actually appear to be the real thing in real packaging.
So how can these guys sell this way at such low prices when my pills legitimately through mail order discount places run $2 to $3 each?
Have to be gross amounts of profit somewhere in the chain.
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Stolen product is one thing that comes to mind. There's got to be a half-dozen ways to crack into the distribution networks of pharmaceuticals, either through armed robbery, burglary, hijacking, extortion or other methods. Pills aren't teleported to the thousands of pharmacies in the US and not everyone involved in that supply chain is honest or beyond influence.
It wouldn't also surprise me if more organized efforts hadn't been made to "get into" the wholesaling business whereby you'd have legal access to
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It may simply be from another country. It may be an alien concept to Americans, but a lot of countries subsidize essential drugs for the well being of their citizens.
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(I f331 dir7y.)
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From stories of people I know that travel and help in missionary trips, they've seen many name brand drugs that go for $100-$200 a pop go for $5-$10 in other countries and we're talking about buying from the same company, so not stolen.
Go to a poorer country and buy up drugs at an almost free rate and re-sell back to the USA.
Google needs dodgy advertisers. (Score:2)
Google's business model requires dodgy advertisers. Google has created and funded a whole industry of AdWords arbitrage, encouraging web spam. That's a big part of their customer base. How often do you see a Fortune 1000 company in a Google ad?
In 2004 and 2005, Google sponsored the "Web Spam Squashing Summit" [sifry.com] In 2006, Google turned to the dark side. They started sponsoring the Search Engine Strategies [searchengi...tegies.com] conference, the web spammer's convention. That's when "Don't be Evil" ended.
We track Google ads a
I volunteer at a public library. (Score:4, Informative)
I usually turn the monitor around so that they can see what I am doing. (Sometimes I think this may be a mistake, because they don't understand what I am doing.) If I'm doing a series of Google searches, trying to narrow things down to what we're looking for, they'll stop me and point to the ads. Usually (almost invariably) selling some transparently bogus alternative treatment. (Remember, they're coming to me asking me to help them find out what's what, not necessarily looking for someplace to buy their radiation crystal magnets.) They'll say "OH, OH, THAT'S IT!" when they see a keyword or two in the ad that relates to what they're looking for.
There are a LOT of people who receive information completely uncritically. They can't tell an ad trying to sell them something from an informational article. They can't tell the difference between an emotional appeal or an argument based essentially on sympathetic magic from actual science. THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO CLICK THOSE ADS. They'll reject things if they've been inoculated against it, but only because they've been told that they should, and had that admonition connected to some deeply held belief. They won't do so because they have legitimately considered whether it could be true or false.
That is why advertisers, particularly on Google with its text ads, have the potential to do a lot of harm.
Go Google! (Score:1)