Are Criminal Actors More Active In Using Google Ads To Scam?

When you see Google ads, how do you feel? It pops up when you search for something on Google or visit any website that is monetized by Google ads. It feels harmless to click the ads, but I don't think you feel the same way now when you see bad actors use Google ads to lure potential victims.

Recently the founder of the DeFi data aggregator platform DeFiLlama reported the scam on ads. Criminal actors gave Google ads for DeFiLlama. It appears on the top of the search engine result page when people search on Google. In spite of reporting the ads to Google multiple times for a couple of days, no action has been taken from Google so far.

The founder confirmed in his tweet that it is not a legitimate ad. It is a trap to make people fall for scams. It will send visitors to the phishing website. The first click might redirect you to a good website. Then a couple of clicks may send you to the phishing website.

Have you ever seen any Google ads that are run by scammers? I saw ads on the Google search result page that were fake. The URL was different from the original website. Cybercriminals use different tactics to make it look legit so that you do not have any doubt.

Paying attention to the URL can save you from accidentally clicking the ads. Maybe you want to download a crypto wallet and land on a fake website via scammers' Google ads. If you download and install the wallet, you follow what bad actors want you to do.

As soon as you insert the seed phrase over there, your crypto is gone forever. You basically hand over your crypto assets to the scammers falling into their traps. DeFiLlama founder suggested using ad blockers to avoid crypto scam ads. Paying attention to the URL can give a warning to stop right there.

You can bookmark legitimate websites that you visit. Updating your browser can help you not to become a victim. You can update your antivirus on your computers or devices that you use. When you download any software, make sure that you land on the official website.

Criminal Actors will come up with new advanced tactics to fool others. Awareness of what's happening in the crypto space can act as the best defense, in my opinion. You can adapt to any situation quickly and follow best practices.

If bad actors keep using Google ads, people will keep avoiding ads. Hope Google will take action against it. Otherwise, online marketers and business owners will not be interested in using their platform for ads. And that will hurt their business.

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