Since a few years ago, phishing websites and scam artists have continued to operate despite Google’s stringent policies against crypto marketing for its advertising service. Changpeng Zhao (CZ), the CEO of Binance, has expressed concern over this worrying situation by issuing a warning on Twitter.
Crypto phishing sites swarm Google
In a tweet on Oct. 27, CZ cautioned users to be wary of phishing websites that appear before legitimate websites while searching for CoinMarketCap on Google.
“This affects users adding smart contract addresses to MetaMask using these phishing sites,” CZ pointed out. “We are trying to contact Google for this, and in the meantime alerting users about this through social channels.”
One of the most popular cryptocurrency data aggregators on the market, CoinMarketCap, was purchased by Binance in April 2020 for an unknown sum. Given its widespread use, a lot of traffic may be routed to these fraudulent adverts.
Bad actors take advantage of Google Ads
Blockchain security firm SlowMist discovered a Terra-related phishing scam in April of this year, in which criminals were using Google Ads to operate fake websites branded with the Astroport and Achor Protocol.
This week, Google’s ads business has attracted a lot of attention as parent company Alphabet noted in its Q3 results call that search advertising expenditure from financial and cryptocurrency organizations was down consecutively.