Google pockets money from illegal Olympic ticket touts

[richard]

Google has been making money from illegal Olympic ticket touts advertising their wares via the search engine, an investigation has found.

Despite these Olympic ticket reselling services being illegal, Google has pocketed money from the people behind these adverts, even though the digital promotions have now been taken down.

The situation was brought to BBC 5 Live’s attention when a listener rang into its ‘Investigations’ show complaining about a scam site, called Live Olympic tickets, which was promoted at the top of the Google search results page when ‘Liz’ (who declined to give her full name), entered in a search to buy some tickets to an event at this summer's games.

"It was a sponsored advert [placed by Google’s AdWords service] at the top of the page, so we presumed it was a trusted official site, and we spent £750 on two tickets for my mum and dad to see the 1500m, which is what my dad really wanted,” Liz told the radio show.

However, after she placed her order, the bogus company not officially recognised as a 2012 Olympic ticket reseller, demanded that she faxed over a copy of her signature in order to complete the ticket transaction – which is when Liz alerted the radio show.

She has so far been unable to get the £750 back from the site, while Google has pocketed the money from the illegal adverts.

Google has said that it was not responsible for the actions or able to monitor the activities of every company which advertises with it.

However, despite now removing the adverts, it took a week for Google to do so after the Metropolitan Police asked the search engine to take them down.

A spokesman for the company said: “We have a set of policies covering which ads can and cannot show on Google.

“These policies and guidelines are enforced by both automated systems and human beings. When we are informed of ads which break our policies, we investigate and remove them if appropriate. For example, working with the police, we have recently taken down a number of violating Olympics ads.

“Our aim is to create a simple and efficient way for legitimate businesses to promote and sell their goods and services whilst protecting them and consumers from illicit activity. We are continuously investing in ways to improve our systems.”

Web security experts have warned internet users to be careful about clicking on adverts on the search engine, as increasing numbers of dubious companies are making their way to the top of the rankings.

"Relying on an automated process is remarkably lax and typing key words into Google can show up illegal sites quite quickly," online security adviser, Reg Walker, told the BBC.

"We carried out an experiment around six months ago trying to knock a ticket scam site off the top of the Google AdWords results and we went up to £28 per click and we still couldn't shift it from the top."

He is also critical about how the search giant removes adverts from unlawful services.

"There's an automated complaint form, which gets an automated reply, which lets you know you're in a queue, and eventually a human being will get around to scrutinising it and do something about it," he said.

"The site could stay up for days, weeks, or possibly even months."


Source
By Emma Barnett
Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph - Telegraph

[richard]

I thought Google was a search engine, the job of policing content is down to the relevant government departments who should be issuing takedown notices and arresting individuals for fraud.

Bearing in mind the sheer quantity of adverts being uploaded every day of the week I would think that even Google would struggle to vet all the advertisers. From what I have observed many words are blocked for use by advertisers.

Time and time again people fall for these ticket scam sites and it really isn't rocket science - the only place to buy tickets for London 2012 is the official London 2012 tickets website!!!