Google is a search engine on which countless ads can be placed, and the fact that it is so easy to place an ad on the platform would obviously make it so that fraud can be conducted in a more or less simple manner. Google claims to take fraudulent ads down as soon as it sees them because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up harming the company’s reputation, and to its credit the company does manage to take down quite a few harmful ads on a regular basis.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that Google is actually not doing quite as good of a job as it’s claiming to. A report from the BBC has revealed that fraudulent ads are still really common on the platform, and a lot of them are claiming to offer government services for a fee even though the services that are being discussed are offered by the government for no charge since they are included in the benefits that citizens get thanks to the taxes they end up paying.
One thing that should be noted is that these ads aren’t exactly scams. If you pay the amount that has been referred to in the ad you might still end up getting your official documents sorted, it’s just that you will have paid an unnecessary fee for something that would at the very least have been significantly cheaper than the amount that you ended up paying if not outright free of charge. Another thing that should be kept in mind is that these services and the websites that are offering them in the first place are not exactly illegal either.
Still, just because of the fact that they are not legal does not change that they are harmful, and that Google is complicit in this sort of thing since it is giving these shysters the chance to find consumers that might be unaware of the true nature of things. The shysters might claim that going to submit your documents yourself is too difficult and time consuming, and that the service they are offering will allow you to avoid having to go through all of the trouble since they would be more than happy to do it on your behalf.
This sort of thing is totally against Google’s policies, so the fact that the ads are still up is something that reflects quite badly on the company. It indicates that Google is not doing quite as much as it should to keep these ads at bay, and at the end of the day it is the customer that will end up suffering as a result of the fact that this is the case.
Google has recently started a process by which ads need to be verified before they can go up. This was only put in place in January of 2021, though, which means that it will be quite a long time before all of the ads that appear on the search engine can be considered absolutely trustworthy and until this happens users will just have to be wary of any of the ads they end up seeing.
Photo: Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto / Getty Images
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that Google is actually not doing quite as good of a job as it’s claiming to. A report from the BBC has revealed that fraudulent ads are still really common on the platform, and a lot of them are claiming to offer government services for a fee even though the services that are being discussed are offered by the government for no charge since they are included in the benefits that citizens get thanks to the taxes they end up paying.
One thing that should be noted is that these ads aren’t exactly scams. If you pay the amount that has been referred to in the ad you might still end up getting your official documents sorted, it’s just that you will have paid an unnecessary fee for something that would at the very least have been significantly cheaper than the amount that you ended up paying if not outright free of charge. Another thing that should be kept in mind is that these services and the websites that are offering them in the first place are not exactly illegal either.
Still, just because of the fact that they are not legal does not change that they are harmful, and that Google is complicit in this sort of thing since it is giving these shysters the chance to find consumers that might be unaware of the true nature of things. The shysters might claim that going to submit your documents yourself is too difficult and time consuming, and that the service they are offering will allow you to avoid having to go through all of the trouble since they would be more than happy to do it on your behalf.
This sort of thing is totally against Google’s policies, so the fact that the ads are still up is something that reflects quite badly on the company. It indicates that Google is not doing quite as much as it should to keep these ads at bay, and at the end of the day it is the customer that will end up suffering as a result of the fact that this is the case.
Google has recently started a process by which ads need to be verified before they can go up. This was only put in place in January of 2021, though, which means that it will be quite a long time before all of the ads that appear on the search engine can be considered absolutely trustworthy and until this happens users will just have to be wary of any of the ads they end up seeing.
Photo: Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto / Getty Images
