Hacker News Reader

Comment by da02 | Hacker News Reader

What kind of fraud does Google do?

It’s not that they do it. It’s that they allow it. Not outright, but they don’t go out of their way to suppress/stop it anymore more than anybody else.

I'm a small to medium sized publisher and I've had to travel through Google's compliance funnels more than I would have liked.

I've never had any compliance issues with any other advertising network.

Google works hard to keep the ecosystem healthy because it's good for their long-term interests. But of course, their systems are not perfect.

If you're removing 700,000 apps a year from your store for violating your own policies, it's fair to say your system is not only not perfect, it's horribly broken.

Completely disagree. Could also mean they're doing a great job finding problematic apps.

They have "only" 2.6 million apps (as of March 2018):

https://www.statista.com/statistics/266210/number-of-availab...

37% fraud-rules breaking rate is pathetic. Maybe they should spend time vetting these things before allowing malware-infested spyware out into the "ecosystem."

Another way to look at it is their submission process fails to catch problematic apps. Making it necessary to pull them from the store after they have been published.

When it comes to email spam or fake email accounts, Google not only allows it, they enable it. One scammer can setup thousands of gmail accounts and google doesn't blink an eye. Gmail also allows "scammer+1@gmail.com" and "scammer+2@gmail" to be the same account. I've reported obvious gmail abuse to Google through their channels, but nothing. Same scammer keeps coming back with new email accounts.

>Gmail also allows "scammer+1@gmail.com" and "scammer+2@gmail" to be the same account.

This is a well-documented feature that has many legitimate uses. If you're trying to stop fraud, clip any gmail addresses after the +. For example, I believe Facebook does this.

I do clip it. I have to do many other things too (spending time and money) to counteract scammers usage of google's services. Given google's ability to track people, they'd could do more against fraud, instead of letting scammers use their services freely (hence my comment of them enabling scammers).

Can't spam detection check if it's the same email with a +1? Seems pretty straightforward.

There's no scarcity in available email addresses. If your security depends on people not being able to register new emails, you've already lost.

Tagging email with + has been a feature of email forever, and has nothing to do with Google. Their service would be broken if they didn't support it.

So, you've basically outsourced your spam detection to Google, and you're here complaining that you have to do a few small things on your end?

No, my point is Google allows and/or enables fraud and they could be doing more to fight it. Source: the article we are discussing, "How a Massive Ad Fraud Scheme Exploited Android Phones to Steal Millions". And my experience with scammers using Gmail.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com