Named & Shamed
Keumars Afifi-Sabet puts the boot into tech villains, jargon-spouting companies and misbehaving software
SOFTWARE WARNING!
YouTube’s ‘unblockable’ ads that scam you
Google’s war on ad-blockers is having mixed results. Some ad-blockers like Adblock Plus (https://adblockplus. org) still work – or it did for me at least, at the time of writing – while all it takes to prevent ads in Brave is to open it in Private Browsing mode (by pressing Ctrl+Shift+N).
Google is also sending mixed messages. Researchers at Malwarebytes spotted that one advert YouTube is currently showing is for the browser extension Total Adblock. So, to get this straight – it doesn’t want you to block ads, but is taking money from companies that let you do just that.
Malwarebytes wonders whether such inconsistency is a sign that YouTube doesn’t have a grip on which companies it allows to advertise (see www.snipca. com/48484). Exhibit B is an advert for a fake news story (‘CEO of N-vidia Arrested?’ – 1in our screenshot). As Malwarebytes’ red arrows show, clicking ‘Visit site’ takes you to another fake news page promoting the scam cryptocurrency scheme Quantum AI 2 .
Clicking the three dots for details about the advert reveals that the advertiser “has not verified their identity yet” 3 . Well, that’s reassuring. If a pricey YouTube Premium subscription is the only official way to stop seeing these ads, you can’t blame viewers for wanting to install ad-blockers instead.
And it’s not just on YouTube that Google is guilty of letting scams through. In the past few months we’ve reported how fraudsters have infiltrated Google’s search results to place fake adverts for popular programs including 1Password, 7-Zip, Audacity, Bitwarden, LibreOffice and VLC Media Player. Tighter regulation of online ads might eventually force Google to act, but until then be very careful about what you click online.
Follow the red arrows and you’ll see that this advert on YouTube is a scam
WHAT ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT?
WH
