Security News > 2020 > July > Google stops pushing scam ads on Americans searching for how to vote

You don't have to pay to vote in the US. Up until recently, you wouldn't have necessarily known that, were you to have run a Google search for how or where to vote.

Such a search would have been polluted with ads like this one offering "Same-day processing" of voter registration for $129:. That ad, which directs to a site from PrivacyWall.org, is the first ad in a Google search for "Register to vote" that was run in an analysis done by watchdog Tech Transparency Project.

We have strict policies in place to protect users from false information about voting procedures, and when we find ads that violate our policies and present harm to users, we remove them and block advertisers from running similar ads in the future.

TTP's report pointed out that recent changes for how Google features its search ads made it tough to distinguish ads from organic search results.

In January, Google started to use the same type face and color scheme for ads as for search results, distinguishing the ads only with a little "Ad" icon and enabling ads to stealthily creep into search results.

News URL

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/07/01/google-stops-pushing-scam-ads-on-americans-searching-for-how-to-vote/