Cyber criminals purchase advertisements that appear within internet search results using a domain that is similar to an actual business or service. When a user searches for that business or service, these advertisements appear at the very top of search results with minimum distinction between an advertisement and an actual search result. These advertisements link to a webpage that looks identical to the impersonated business’s official webpage.
In tips section:
Use an ad blocking extension when performing internet searches. Most internet browsers allow a user to add extensions, including extensions that block advertisements. These ad blockers can be turned on and off within a browser to permit advertisements on certain websites while blocking advertisements on others.
Every once in a while I accidentally open chrome instead of Firefox on my phone, and holy crap is the internet intolerable without an ad blocker.
It’s intolerable even WITH an ad blocker. There are so many dark patterns these days.
About a year ago, I read a book called The Cluetrain Manifesto, which was originally published before the big players took over the internet. Every once in a while, I had to put the book away because it was too depressing to read their original theories on how the internet would liberate people, facilitate interactions between customers and companies, connect like-minded hobbyists without any gatekeepers involved and create meaningful relationships between stakeholders. Of course all of those things did indeed happen in one way or another, but 5 companies accounting for at least 80% of internet traffic and consumers being force-fed all that absolutely obnoxious adwords crap everytime they visit any useful website is definitely not what they, or any internet idealist for that matter, had in mind.
