Google cracks down on tech support scams

Google has made the astonishing revelation that in 2017 it took down an average of “100 ads a second” for violating company policies.

Of those, some were scams advertising bogus tech support services where callers ended up handing over large sums of money for “support” they didn’t need.

Ads delivered by Google’s search engine appear at the top of listings and can, in the case of scams, show fake web addresses to trick the user into thinking they’re looking at information for a legitimate service.

Google has, for a long time, had systems in place protecting people from misleading, inappropriate, and harmful ads, but when it detects an increase in scams targeting a specific category, it tries to move swiftly to put more resources into eradicating those ads from its search results.