The online bank manager.one, dedicated to professionals, has been the target for a week of a phishing campaign abusing Google’s advertising tools, the co-founder of the French start-up Adrien Touati told AFP on Tuesday. .
According to the co-founder of manager.one, Google didn’t do its job by allowing the author of the scam to appear at the top of the search results on the keyword Manager one, thanks to the purchase of the keyword on the Google Ads platform. Google sells advertisers the possibility of appearing prominently on its search engine via the automated auction system for words, brands and expressions.
Disputed ads now deleted
Contact by AFP, Google explained on Tuesday that it had removed the contentious ads and launched in January 2023 in France a new process for verifying ads promoting financial services.
However, the group does not prohibit the use of a brand as a keyword. Via this keyword buying process, according to Adrien Touati, a site impersonating the visual identity of the online bank manager.one had been highlighted since mid-February in the advertisements of the American glove.
This is a copy of our site
It’s a copy of our site, there’s our home page and our login page, he explains, and several bank customers have entered their credentials there and then validated the notification allowing the hacker to connect their place. At least 6 customers had their accounts debited fraudulently with hundreds of thousands of euros stolen according to the bank. The most affected customer was debited up to 40,000 euros in expenses by the hacker.
We made a report to the Prudential Control and Resolution Authority (ACPR), responsible for supervising the activity of banks, said Adrien Touati, who is also considering assigning Google.
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Pro banks and nobanks: tough battle on the purchase of keywords
In the growth market of the nobanks, the purchase of keywords is negotiated at a high price. Manager.one already spends several tens of thousands of euros per month with Google to defend its brand against its competitors. In 2021, the cybersecurity firm Checkpoint had already alerted to major fraud using Google ads to steal cryptocurrency wallets. Google had blocked more than 58.9 million fraudulent ads promoting financial services that year.
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