AOL, Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB), Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Twitter Inc. (NYSE:TWTR) have banded together in a rare show of unity to create a new website, TrustInAds.org. The purpose of this is to raise awareness among consumers, and US policymakers of the damaging effects of online ad scams.
As a part of this new initiative, TrustInAds.org will start issuing Bad Ads Trend Alerts. This type of service has been tried before in the form of the now defunct Ads Integrity Alliance. The hope for this new version is that with the backing of the combined resources of these 4 giants of the internet, it will have more success.
The first Bad Ads Trends Alert focuses on tech support scams. As part of the review, Facebook and Google removed over 4,000 suspicious advertiser accounts. The scams they uncovered were that advertisers were representing themselves as tech support specialists from a variety of different tech companies. They would offer help for login problems and scam gullible users into download malware onto their computer to ‘fix’ the problem. The ads were linked to over 2,400 tech support websites.
The Trustinads.org has a section where anyone can report any ads that they feel are suspicious. Ray Haralson, the Executive Director of TrustInAds.org said when launching the service that “Internet companies have worked hard to remove these ads from their platforms, but they need consumers help too.”
In 2013, Google alone said it had removed over 350 million malicious ads during the year, and had received in excess of 100,000 complaints about this type of malicious software. TrustInAds hopes that it will achieve a lot of success this year with its consumer outreach and education initiatives.
