How Scammers Deceive Through Advertising: Hidden Traps in Ads

Advertising is an integral part of our lives, almost all goods and services on the market have advertising, and how else would we know about them if not for advertising.

Professionals create advertising by investing certain amounts, effort, and knowledge, and they profit from it. Scammers have also learned to skillfully create advertising products to lure clients, but not to sell them a product, but to deceive them and make money.

Fraudulent Ads

Among scammers, false advertising is common. It is based on simulating the display of ads and the number of clicks on them. Such actions indicate that scammers collect funds deceitfully from advertisers, with advertisers paying for ads and fake views.

Scammers work with advertising content mainly using bots and special programs. Several methods of their work can be identified:

• they use bot networks that generate fake consumer traffic, reaching several thousand views;
• bots are set up to provoke ad display on user devices, but users actually don't see it;
• ad videos are configured to play automatically and become invisible, but the number of views and impressions is counted;
• they use special programs configured to simulate a large number of fake clicks on an ad when a user makes one click.

All these fraudulent activities with traffic and ads significantly harm advertisers, developers, and users, leading to decreased trust in ads in mobile apps.

False Advertising

False advertising is advertising from an advertiser and distributor or advertising from a manufacturer that intentionally misleads the consumer.

To mislead the user viewing the ad, scammers create advertising products about jobs, goods, services, and manufacturing companies.

The lie in such advertising can be:

description of the consumer properties of the product,

• claiming a certificate for a product when it's absent,
• lying about compliance with state standards,
• warranty periods,
• service and product costs,
• expiration dates,
• service life.

Such advertising can lead to criminal liability, especially in cases where damage is caused to others' property, harm to health, or harm to the environment, and damage to the reputation of a company or organization. In this case, the advertiser who provided information for the creation, placement, and distribution of the advertisement is held accountable.

Financial Scam

A financial scam is a fraud aimed at deception, allowing money to be taken from people.

With fake advertising, scammers often use a type of deception called phishing. By fully copying a well-known and popular resource, they can create fake bank, microfinance organization, or large company websites, which are called phishing sites.

Through ad announcements, victims receive fake links to clone sites on social networks, email, and messengers. If you use such a link and go to register, the scammer may require you to enter your payment data, which should not be done, as the information goes to the scammers.

Using phishing messages, scammers distribute ad announcements with deliberately false information. By using the link in the ad, a person may believe the ad and go to a fake site without realizing it.

Scammers entice users with lucrative offers, promotions, discounts, so they register and enter their data; they are interested in information about bank accounts and access to them.

User Protection

Considering the number of fraudulent schemes on the internet, it may seem like everything is a scam, but above all, you must learn to ensure your own safety.

There are several methods that scammers use to deceive:

1. They promise high profits and huge income with small investments. Such schemes are characterized as financial pyramids, where the scammer enriches themselves at the expense of investors who make deposits and attract others.
2. They hide information or do not provide specific details about the company's name, their personal data, guarantees, and risks; this is done deliberately so the user does not discover the fraudulent scheme.
3. After completing a deal, the scammer delays the payment of money, inventing additional conditions, suggesting investing more, purchasing shares, or subscribing to the site.

These and many other methods are used by scammers to deceive, so it is necessary to adhere to certain rules to avoid such participation:

• do not click on suspicious links,
• check the authenticity of the resource,
• install antivirus programs,
• keep information about yourself and payment systems confidential,
• verify the reliability of the organization you plan to invest in,
• verify the authenticity of licenses.