Alliance Against Bait & Click offers tips to help shoppers avoid
deceptive online ads lurking on search engines. Scam ads, or "scads"
lure online shoppers with search ads highlighting popular brands that
the site may not even actually offer.
"Scads
may trick holiday shoppers into paying for things they don't want, an
especially egregious practice during this holiday season when so many
shoppers are trying to make every dollar count for their families," said
Jarrod Agen, chief spokesperson for the Alliance Against Bait & Click (AABC),
an organization that educates consumers about deceptive sponsored
links.
Regulations prohibit advertisements in newspapers or magazines from
misleading shoppers with fake promotions, but search engines like
Google, Yahoo! and MSN forego similar safeguards, informs AABC. In fact,
search engines profit from scads because by allowing deceptive ads, they
can sell more clicks and received increased revenues.
But
shoppers can take steps to avoid scads, as AABC suggests them to look
closely at three ad components: headline, body, and url.
Does
the body copy of the ad seem appropriate? Does it reference the brand
or product you are looking for?
Does
the headline correspond to the link? For example, does the headline
promote a cell phone brand, but the link seems to be about stereo
equipment?
Is
the offer realistic? If it sounds too good to be true, it probably
is.
Upon
landing on a site, internet users should also ask themselves whether it
is the site they were looking for or thought they were going to end up
at. If it's not what they were looking for, it's safest to leave.
Also,
scads often take unsuspecting internet users to unsecured sites –
exposing them to fraud, viruses, and spyware, cautions AABC.
