How a macOS developer got banned from Google Ads for 'malicious software'
How I advertise malicious software on Google Ads
A developer of RACE, a native macOS terminal multiplexer written in Rust, recounts how Google Ads suspended his account for 'malicious software' and 'compromised site' after he spent $500 on advertising. Despite providing evidence of clean scans from VirusTotal, Google Safe Browsing, and Search Console, plus a detailed security review, his appeals were repeatedly rejected without explanation. He explores possible causes, including the app's legitimate subprocess management, and considers EU legal action.
Google said 'Malicious software' and 'Compromised Site'. Sounded like bullshit.
- 1970-01-01
Google has forgotten the plot. A quick tangent story follows: I attempted to add a Tesla Supercharger as it went live to Google Maps. I was the very first to pay to recharge at the new location. The process went something like this:
1st time: Uploaded 4 photos, local business info, current charger prices, and GPS coordinates. Google replied this would be sent to human review. It was rejected within 6 minutes.
2nd attempt: Uploaded 6 more photos, including shots of local business hours and info, and current prices. Rejected in 6 minutes.
3rd time: One photo of a new charger, no description. Rejected in 6 minutes.
4th time: Appended all above details to local business info. It went live within a minute.
5 days later: Supercharger location was added by ??? and included no info at all and the pinpoint was off by 100m.
- OptionX
Google is the worst offender, but a lot of companies are increasingly hiding themselves behind a wall of automated systems to completely neuter users ability to challenge any decision unilaterally taken by the them. The LLM-age has worsen the situation but it started well before it.
At some point it may be necessary to add the requirement for large companies to have a both human contact point and perhaps a requirement for specifics on account terminations and the like, or at least a way to request them, to the letter of the law.
- Toutouxc
That’s surprising, because in my opinion Google doesn’t care about malicious anything. The other day I had to look for something on YouTube on my dad’s computer with a disabled ad-blocker. I saw like 30 ads in 15 minutes, every single one of them was a scam, literally not a single non-fraudulent ad. Google is full cartoon villain evil at this point.
- xlii
I made an update, but I'll post also here in comments.
It seems that either a human read it or it triggered some trigger, but my account has been reinstated. Thank you, also those who made this issue visible.
On one side I'm happy it happened, on the other, it's a shame that it took complaining on the internet amplified by HackerNews to get this problem fixed...
- huhtenberg
We had that, almost a decade ago.
The cause was that the site was in fact compromised and at a certain very discreet URL it hosted a bunch of pages for legit products that linked to external shady sites. They got in through some PHP hole. Got lucky they didn't do more damage. However as per various Google pages and dashboards no issues were present except being tagged as a malware distribution site.
The remedy was to audit the site, clean it up and then re-submit the appeal. Got the tag cleared in a couple hours.
- mcast
When you search "us passport" or "tsa precheck" on Google, you constantly see promoted ad results impersonating government sites (ie passportvisarush.com or easegov.com) extracting and selling your PII (social security number, etc) from your application.
I've reported the ads multiple times, but new ones still end up being promoted. I'm sure these companies have mined and sold thousands of SSN/address/DOB info from unsuspecting users.
- bede
FYI https://race-term.com is blocked by NCSC's Protective DNS service using my UK University's connection. Are you sure your domain is not blacklisted somewhere?
- andriamanitra
I'm guessing "race term" got automatically flagged because it can be understood as "word or expression that refers to a racial group or to race/ethnicity" i.e. an euphemism for a slur.