How to spot and avoid scams and malware in search results – The Washington Post

Nasty scams and malware are preying on your trust by hiding behind the ads that sit on top of search pages. Google, DuckDuckGo and Bing are being paid to put them in front of us, and they haven’t figured out how to stop it.

Washington Post reader Jack Wells wrote to me recently after a fright. “I am afraid I may have been hacked this morning, and I wonder if you could offer any advice on how to deal with it,” he wrote.

Here’s what happened: Wells had gone to DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused search engine I also use, and typed “Citibank login” in the hopes of visiting the banking portal. The first item appeared to be an ad for the Citibank log-in page, so he clicked on it.

Strangely, Wells got taken to a blank screen. So he hit the back button and discovered he was on a page whose actual address ended in “.ru” (for Russia) and was most definitely not Citibank.

It appears Wells had fallen for a scam search ad used to trick people into inadvertently handing over their passwords or…

Read Full Story: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/16/scams-search-ads/

The post How to spot and avoid scams and malware in search results – The Washington Post first appeared on SEO, Marketing and Social News | OneSEOCompany.com.

source: https://news.oneseocompany.com/2022/09/16/how-to-spot-and-avoid-scams-and-malware-in-search-results-the-washington-post_2022091630442.html

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