Google To Block Cryptocurrency Ads

0
2219

Software giant Google is banning cryptocurrency advertising from June in a crackdown on scammers and unregulated financial products.

Google joins Facebook in a bid to tackle scammers – Facebook already has a similar ban in place.

In a surprise announcement, Google will clear the search engine of all advertising for cryptocurrencies, initial coin offerings (ICO), wallets and exchanges.

Google’s director of sustainable ads, Scott Spencer, said in a blogpost: “We updated several policies to address ads in unregulated or speculative financial products like binary options, cryptocurrency, foreign exchange markets and contracts for difference (CFDs).”

Children targeted

Skins betting will also come under scrutiny as Google tries to stop games and social media pedalled as a cloak for online gambling that targets children and young adults.

The fight to control advertising eats tremendous resources, says Google.

“In 2017, we took down more than 3.2 billion ads that violated our advertising policies. That’s more than 100 bad ads per second!” said Spencer.

“This means we’re able to block most bad ad experiences, like malvertising and phishing scams, before the scams impact people.

“We blocked 79 million ads in our network for attempting to send people to malware-laden sites and removed 400,000 of these unsafe sites last year and we removed 66 million trick-to-click ads as well as 48 million ads that were attempting to get users to install unwanted software.”

Bounty for hacker information

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance, based in Hong Kong, has posted a $250,000 bounty for anyone who can supply information that leads to the arrest of hackers involved in a bid to crack the company’s security in recent weeks.

The hackers failed to breach Binance’s security and no digital currency was stolen.

The exchange has a war chest of $10 million set aside to pay rewards for information about hackers and is calling on other exchanges to join the campaign.

“To ensure a safe crypto community, we can’t simply play defence,” said a statement.

“We need to actively prevent any instances of hacking before they occur, as well as follow through after-the-fact. Even though the hacking attempt against Binance on March 7th was not successful, it was clear it was a large-scale, organized effort. This needs to be addressed.”