Fake Amazon Ad on Google Links to Tech Support Scam
Fake Amazon Ad
Fake Amazon Ad :- Many people use the medium of the internet for purchasing their daily requirements. It saves the time and hassle of visiting a retail shop and standing in a queue too but your stuff.
There are lots of fake Amazon ads on Google and other search engines that tries to fool potential customers into buying the product. This might seem like a great deal at first glance but, when you look closer, it is actually a scam. These scams usually target small business owners and try to convince them that their product is a bargain and that they will be making money in no time. Even worse is when the website is loaded with hyperlinks that point to their site, this is just an attempt to mislead the customer further.
The problem with these adverts is that there is no way for the customer to find out who the seller is. You need to visit the site, scroll down and click on the “About Us” section and check the ‘sales’ tab. Most of the listings come from the seller’s own website and most people who sell products online have links to their own websites. You will see their name and probably also some details about their product as well.
By doing this you can easily identify the legitimacy of the site as well as the credibility of the products. With regards to selling anything, especially electronics, it is always advisable to avoid any product that comes from a scam site. If the product is from a vendor that is well known in the market, you can be sure that the product is not one of those that comes from a scam site. A well known site would have all the relevant information regarding the product, usually including detailed pictures of the item, price and even any testimonials from the users. If it has an email address you can send an email to them and ask for more information about the product. If the site is legit then you will get a reply from them and the order will be sent out as soon as possible. Another good place to check the authenticity of the website is on the About Us section.
They order their requirements from the comfort of their drawing room and later the required item gets delivered to the given address.
There are many websites, namely Amazon, Flipkart, Shopclues, Tatacliq who help with this type of transactions on a daily and widely basis.
Recently worldwide shoppers were preparing themselves for the bonanza sales which were going to be featured during the Black Friday. During that preparation many people might have inadvertently given access to their PCs to some hackers following a scam regarding Amazon.
There was a fake advertisement which was visible in the Google search results on Thursday, just before the frenzy of one of the biggest shopping days of the year, which looked totally like a legitimate link to the official website of Amazon.
The advertisement was first spotted by CBS News and the advertisement appeared whenever a user typed the search word ‘Amazon’ into Google Search.
When the ad was clicked by any user, instead of going to the official website of Amazon, the ad redirected the user to a bogus page which seemed as if it was run by Windows Support Team.
The page suggested that the user’s computer has been infected with malware. It further stated that if the user closes the page, the access to the computer will be disabled permanently as a precaution to further damage to the network.
Moreover, the page even suggested that valuable information like financial data, Facebook logins, credit card details, email account logins and photos stored on the computer has been infected by the malware and has been stolen.
Along with all these information a toll-free number was also posted and instructions were given to dial the number within 5 minutes so that the expert engineers could walk the user through the recovery process and thus prevent unnecessary inconvenience.
CBS News stated that when an employee from their organization rang up the listed number, a man with a South Asian accent claimed to work for Microsoft and tried taking over the system remotely and charge the user a one-time fee of $150.
When the CBS News employee confronted the man with accusations that he was a scammer, the mysterious crook became annoyed and hung up the phone quickly.
This proved that people who may have fallen for this kind of hoax scheme could have put their personal information, including their credit card numbers, at risk.
It seemed that the ad was hosted on a Facebook page, hidden in the form of a genuine link to Amazon.com. As the app was hosted on a recognized social media platform and not on the original servers of Google, the hackers easily avoided detection from Google’s automated scam identification software.
After the incident was disclosed, the ad which was set up on Thursday has since been removed from Google’s AdSense platform.
According to a Google spokesperson, who told this to CNBC, that the ad was an “abuse of our platform.” “Fake Amazon Ad”
“We strictly prohibit advertising illegal activity and have removed these ads and suspended the account,” the spokesperson said. “When we find ads that violate our policies, we take immediate action to disable the offending sources.”
Moreover, Microsoft’s privacy page says, “We do not send unsolicited email messages or make unsolicited phone calls to request personal or financial information or fix your computer. If you receive an unsolicited email message or phone call that purports to be Microsoft and requests that you send personal information or click links, delete the message or hang up the phone.”
The tech support scammers use scare tactics to lure people into paying unnecessary technical support and make people believe that they are charging the money to fix the contrived device, platform or software problems.
Users can get redirected to these types of websites automatically through malicious ads found on dubious sites while downloading fake installers, music or movies.
These types of websites typically use malware in the form of script files like JavaScript or HTML, which can be used to display fake error messages ( Fake Amazon Ad ).
These malicious scripts can sometimes put the browser on full screen and randomly spawn pop-up messages which won’t easily go away, and can essentially lock the browser.