Enhancing AdWords / Policing AdWord-based Phishing Attempts
I just came across a Google AdWords Ad was linked to a phishing site. The top-center sponsored link on a “eu change of address form” search was pointing toward an impersonation of the actual USPS Change of Address form. I’d include an active link but I don’t have the referral traffic/trouble -
This wasn’t a random piece of malware I stumbled across in some long forgotten corner of the internet but rather the the top center *sponsored link* on the first page of Google Search results! IMHO this was “misleading at best” and I can only imagine someone with introductory-level web fluency being mislead, someone like my Mom(!), so I decided to report it.
After a few minutes of searching, which needless to say was more than I’d expected, I finally found the Feedback on a specific Google Adwords Ad form.
I’d expected/assumed that Google would have a very straightforward/streamlined way to report abuse - don’t be evil, or allow evil, right? Well it took longer than I’d like to admit - and oddly enough abuse.google.com doesn’t return a DNS entry, hmmm.
So I got thinking (wearing the systems designer hat) and came up with this -
What if Google added a hover state to their AdWords text ads? When the user lingers over the ad, a small list of options appears - The first/top option might be “Visit Site” or “Continue”, followed by “Ad Feedback” - which would ultimately lead to a form for reporting abuse.
Hey, extending the scope for *just a moment*, some fun stuff could be done here - Google could layer on a bit more interactivity into their text-based AdWords. They could enable advertisers to build very simple interactive text ads - lets call them “Enhanced AdWords” - text ads with rollover interactive capabilities. Under this model, a new “partial involvement” metric could be gathered. Of the people who viewed the ad, how many peeked inside - as is common in the expanding ad market. Anyhow, when a user activates the rollover, a series of sub-options (or intention paths) would be displayed. Options might include Yes, No, Maybe to a question or any other response or intention one could think of - including, the one I want for the circumstance described above - “Ad Feedback”, which would have sub-option for report as abusive/offensive/fraud.
Anyhow, I didn’t really intend to open up a huge can of worms / great opportunity to enhance AdWords here, rather I wanted to stress the importance of providing a feedback pathway for the viewers of AdWords (and any other online content). Engage, engage, engage!
In other news: I see they’ve setup a specific form for reporting Adwords phishing emails and/or they can be forwarded to phishing@google.com. I’ve been getting a decent number of these, I’ll have to forward a few of them on.
Firefox - Enhanced Tab Management
I’m a big fan of opening things in new tabs - I find this doing this helps me keep context when reviewing lists of things(say, search results), allows me to “save things I want to read, but can’t right now” and if the process of opening/closing tabs generally seems faster than using the back button a lot (no need to reload pages).
This said, I’m up against a wall with this technique - At some point one of the tabs will have a JS or SWF script that starts to consumes more and more cycles of the CPU, and as the number of tabs grows, so does the chance of having “a few bad apples”.
While browsing this way might be non-standard, I’m certainly not alone in the practice and suspect more people would browse this way if given the choice.
Possible solutions:
Session Manager enhancement or new “Tab State” (Active or Inactive).
Open but inactive tabs cease execution of any/all clientside scripts or embeds. Users can specify triggers (haven’t viewed in 4 hours?), and these tabs are marked “open but inactive”. Screen shots could be taken prior to stopping clientside execution so users can nearly instantly switch back to these tabs, viewing the cached rendering prior to resuming clientside execution.
Process monitor for clientside scripts
This may well already exist (Greasemonkey?) but it’d be nice to see a list of all clientside JS/SWF processes and have the ability to end specific processes.
I’d argue that there is an environmental impact at stake here (laptop runs hotter, consuming more electricity), not to mention productivity gains. Any thoughts or recommendations?
- Lou
