Did You Know? You Can Lose Money Because Of Google Search Too, Here's How

Online fraud is one the most common types of fraud and a large number of people are falling prey to it. But have you ever heard that one can lose his or her money by simple Google search? Yes, you read that right. According to reports, researchers have discovered that searches for Bitcoin QR code are leading people to fake websites. The researchers from crypto wallet provider ZenGo claim that 4 out 5 search results on Google are of fraudulent websites and using any of them will rip off users of their hard earned money.

Using any of these websites will send the QR codes to the scammer address that are then used by the mobile phone cameras to capture the data.

“These sites generate a QR code that encodes an address controlled by the scammers, instead of the one requested by the user, thus directing all payments for this QR code to the scammers. Scammers do not even bother with generating their fake QR themselves, instead, they shamelessly call a blockchain explorer API to generate the QR for their address," the researchers were quoted as saying by a report published in Zee Business.

According to the report, as much USD 20,000 has been lost to QR code scams and the exact figure could be much higher. This underlines the fact that everything that Google search shows can’t be trusted. Moreover, the search engine giant has failed to keep a check on such fake links.

In a related development, Dairy major Amul had slapped a legal notice on Google India over the search engine allegedly earning revenues from fake websites carrying its trademark. Amul alleged that the Google Ads platform is allowing such miscreants to use its paid promotion services repeatedly without any background checks and in the process earning revenues from the click-based advertising on their page.

In the legal notice, Amul asked Google "to immediately cease and desist from displaying the search result of such fake/fraudulent websites".