It looks like advertisers have found new inventive and unusual way to earn money. No, they aren’t employing nasty spyware parasites or dangerous viruses this time. Now they are running fake Google web sites. Yes, you read it right, Google sites can also be corrupt. Of course, those actually are not real legitimate sites of the famous company, but very similarly looking pages containing additional advertisements. As you know, Google never puts any ads on the first search engine’s page. From the first sight it is difficult to say, that pages on screenshots provided below are fake.
The m-game[dot]name/tr site looks like a real Google page. The most interesting thing is that it’s actually is real! It uses Google’s genuine search field, buttons, links, design elements, etc. All those objects are loaded from the original web site every time you access the page. However, one tiny thing on this page is not from Google. It is a very small, virtually invisible advertisement, which allows the site’s owner to make some money every time the visitor accesses the page.
Another site, google[dot]by, is very similar to the latter. It also uses original Google code. However, its first page contains much bigger advertisements distributed by the site’s owner. Furthermore, Google Belarus (that’s how this site is called) pretends to be an official Google site for the Republic of Belarus. However, the Google team says it is not their resource. It uses different IP address and, according to some experts, belongs to ActiveMedia, Belarussian IT agency.
So, what’s the meaning of all this? Both sites use the Google engine and thus provide the same search results. But imagine, what would happen if there were more such resources. Those sites could potentially be used for the illegal distribution of dangerous spyware parasites. Considering all this scary news about the WMF exploit, rogue Google sites do not look so harmless. We can only hope that spyware vendors will not follow the example of Google Belarus and m-game[dot]name/tr.
January 12th, 2006 at 7:18 pm
I received a fake e-mail from E-bay. It said that my account had been compromised and that I had to check my informations about me and my credit card number. I Knew something was wrong when I got it, even though it should have been easier for me to see trough it - I do not have an account at E-bay!!!
Just to make sure I opened E’bay’s homepage to compare to the e-mail. Even though they looked the same I still didn’t trust it. I told (the real) E-bay that I had forgotten my password - just to make sure that I didn’t have an account that I had forgotten all about - I haven’t received anything from them.