When Benjamin Sowers lost his duty last year due to the pandemic, he and his fiancée, Keely Reed, reflected on a new career: starting a food truck serving cold meats and sandwiches, to be parked outdoors in the family circle of the Reed Winery. in Hood River, Oregon. As april’s opening date got closer and closer, the truck, called Wheels, needed a bank account. To open one, the couple needed an employer identity number. To get it, Reed did what anyone would do, do.
She Googled it.
“The first thing that came up here was anything, Arraygov, -gov,” he told The Markup on the phone. “I thought, “Great, that’s it. “
He clicked on it, completed his details and paid the payment of $250 requested through the site. He had fallen into a trap, which he had set through the owner of ein-gov. tax-filing-forms. com, who paid Google to prove it. your ad for the purposes of your search for an “online employer identity number” – and place it above that of the IRS, the company that distributes loose EIC online.
Reed had inadvertently fallen into a craft industry of sites that rated premiums for loose or affordable government services in a different way. This is a domain that continues to use Google’s ads section, despite a flagrant violation of Google’s stated policies and, in some cases, the law.
Google’s advertising policy states that “promotions to download app support or payment from an official directly through a government or government-delegated provider” are not allowed. However, Markup has discovered a number of examples of classified ads that seem to do just that.
Google has “removed all those classified ads classified for violating our policies,” Google spokeswoman Christa Muldoon said after The Markup classified ads to the company. “We prohibit ads that deceive users by associating with a government agency. “
Muldoon did not respond to a query as to why classified ads violate Google’s policy.
In addition to the site that deceived Reed, Tax Filing Forms also operates irs. gov-taxnumber. com, a URL that “irs. gov” is not yet affiliated with the IRS. The markup discovered classified ads for this Google site on Tax Filing Forms websites have a percentage of the sober design of government websites, enough so that Reed doesn’t realize what happened until his banker raised a red flag for a multi-day waiting time The IRS promptly supplies the INFs).
Reed complained to corporate email and said he had been promised a refund, minus the $75 “processing fee,” but said it didn’t happen.
The tax bureaucracy did respond to several requests for comment.
A similar ad caught Mason Bain, who was moving to Georgia in March. When he went to replace his address, he Googled “Replace USPS Address” and clicked on one of the first links he saw. It was an ad for a site that charged him $59. 03, well above the US$1. 05 postal service fee. But it’s not the first time Bain, who cannot accurately call the site you clicked, kept your receipt, but does not involve calling from the company or site.
Many Google-rated ads for searches like “change my USPS address” go back to third-party sites whose fine print indicates they have a higher rate.
Markup also discovered misleading fitness insurance ads, which claimed to sell “COBRA,” a type of insurance that fired staff can only buy through their former employer, through an online provider. Other classified Google ads showed the government official’s response to “Healthcare. gov” fitness insurance exchange in giant blue letters, but were actually third-party sites.
“Unfortunately, in the COVID-19 era, we have noticed what appears to be an increase in the number of scammers and scammers looking to market fake fitness policies and programs. He’s unhappy when those criminals are looking to take on other vulnerable people. who are just looking to make sure that they and those they enjoy are most responsible for fitness services,” said Matthew Smith, executive director of the Anti-Insurance Fraud Coalition.
If a moderate client is most likely deceived about the official prestige of something, he may oppose the law.
The federal firm that administers COBRA regulations told Markup that it is “concerned about reports such as misleading selling a “COBRA insurance,” said Grant Vaught, spokesperson for the Employee Benefits Security Administration. state insurance regulators “if they believe they are being attacked by scammers looking to sell them fake insurance. “
A user who picked up the phone from Health Plan Options Today, the corporate behind the “We provide COBRA insurance” ad, who said his call was Damian, claimed that the corporate was not selling COBRA insurance but said he was not aware of corporate Google. He claimed that the appellants never thought the company was offering COBRA insurance. The company did not respond to a request for comments by email.
Rebecca Tushnet, a Harvard law professor who studies advertising, reviewed the announcements in this story at the request of The Markup. “They have a chance to be deceptive,” he said, official prestige of something, this would possibly oppose the law.
“There is express legislation that opposes the impersonation of federal agents, however, the general advertising law also prohibits the misrepresentation of curtains, so a false officially prestige participation would be won through a really large number of moderate consumers and curtains for them, it would be a violation of the law,” Tushnet said.
Microsoft, which sells classified search ads for its own Bing search engine, as well as for the Privacy-Focused Search Engine DuckDuckGo (Disclosure: DuckDuckGo is a contributor to The Markup), has also served classified ads to get an EIN with “irs” or “gov” in classified addresses and ads that provide to sell COBRA fitness insurance.
“We take fraudulent ads very seriously. Microsoft is banning this content, adding what may be preferred to be perceived as misleading, fraudulent, or destructive to site visitors,” said John Cosley, senior director of Microsoft’s advertising division, in an email, mentioning policies opposed to misleading advertising, which he updated in the following year to prohibit third-party advertising for government services. “We’re investigating those results,” he said.
Like Google, Microsoft policies explicitly prohibit classified ads classified for personal use of replacement sites. However, unlike Google, Microsoft adheres to this policy; Markup may simply not place classified ads classified to deal with replacement sites sold through Microsoft.
DuckDuckGo spokesman Kamyl Bazbaz said, “Our classified ads are served through Microsoft advertising,” which defines and enforces advertising policies.
In general, it is legal to offer assistance using facilities that are also provided through government. This is what many of those sites say they do in small print disclaimers that regularly appear on their sites. Dené Joubert, a researcher at the Better Business Bureau, Great West and Pacific, has compiled a list of six additional topics, such as boat registration, where corporations strongly promote similar facilities, “doing the task the customer can do himself,” Joubert said. But, he said, “most stick to ” and perform the service.
It wasn’t Reed or Bain. Reed’s experience receiving the EIN for his fiancé’s food truck directly from the IRS. Bain stated that his mail only began to be forwarded after converting the addresses to the official USPS website.
Warnings on sites like these occasionally imply that this is not a government agency. But that’s not enough to make them legally kosher, experts say. “The doctrine is that disclaimer will have to work. If a significant number of consumers are still deceived, their disclaimer has not been successful, it has not become a component of the general message,” Tushnet told The Markup.
There are examples of measures taken through opposition to such scams.
Last year, the Federal Trade Commission sued On Point Global, a company that allegedly advertised Internet sites through Google seek where it can renew its driver’s license, purchase a fishing license, or if it was eligible for public benefits such as Section 8 housing. In fact, when other people signed up for one of those services, regularly for more than $20 each, On Point sent them a PDF “guide” containing public information on how to perform the task through the popular government site.
It’s lucrative. The sale of PDF guides gave the company $63. 2 million in less than two years, according to court documents. Other services, such as offering “assistance” for full form substitution, provided $17. 1 million.
It’s known how much On Point Global spent on Google ads.
The case is still in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida; In court records, On Point Global denied that they were misleading or illegal, claiming that they had revealed that they were not affiliated with the government and that they had never promised to provide services (former On Point CEO Burton Katz did not respond to a request from Melanie E. Damian, the court-appointed attorney to lead On Point until the case is resolved, also did not respond to a request for comment.
In recent years, researchers have exposed abusive and misleading Google ad networks for crisis pregnancy centers that pass through abortion clinics, expensive lead turbines that pass as local locksmiths, and suspicious locations that secretly direct patients to affiliated rehabilitation centers.
And fraudulent fitness advertising has been searching Google for a long time.
A 2019 Philadelphia Inquirer investigation found a woman who clicked on a personal “Healthcare. gov” ad, thinking she was dealing with government-approved plans, and ended with a plan that didn’t cover her pre-existing conditions. acting like a secret buyer, he told a broker he had diabetes, but sold a plan that didn’t deceive him.
The Centers for Medicare
Google told Senator Bob Casey of the United States in November 2019 that he would take the decision to ban “fake ads that suggest they were healthcare. gov, but would take consumers to the website,” Casey’s spokeswoman, Aisha Johnson, told The Markup.
However, in March and April, The Markup discovered 3 listings classified with words like “Healthcare. gov – Get a quote by comparing all plans” and “Healthcare. gov 2021 Enrollment – Compare Affordable Plans Now”, which led to sites.
Classified ads already violate Google’s existing policies, however, Muldoon’s spokesman said Google recently announced a new specific physical care policy that would require selling fitness plans in order to sell insurance.
State insurance regulators, as well as several federal agencies, are beginning to pay attention to misleading insurance marketing, adding Google classified ads in particular, said Peg Jasa, nebraska Insurance Department spokesman in The Markup.
The IRS online page warns: “Beware of Internet sites that value this flexible service,” obviously to avoid Reed’s situation. The IRS did not respond to several requests for comment.
The Centers for Medicare
The U. S. Postal Service. ” Occasionally he receives visitor court cases about the position the visitor paid the agents,” said James Wilson, director of addresses and geospatial generation of the US Postal Service. The Markup in a comunicado. no does much more than take “appropriate action” to counter those who “abuse USPS trademarks or make false statements from the USPS association in their efforts to attract consumers. “
MyMove, the company that manages the online portal to replace the postal service, will pay Google to also appear above personal ads (USPS spokeswoman Sara Martin said the amount is “exclusive”).
Bain blames himself in part for not employing the genuine replacement of dealing with the site. “Honestly, the total scenario could have been avoided if I had been a little more careful. I’m quite aware of what I’m doing online, so, as I said, I don’t really care. “
But, he adds, “I would say google allows those sorted ads to look like [top] on their list is pretty bad, especially for such a giant company. “
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