Thanks, Google: Scam Link via Your Alert Service

July 20, 2025

This blog post is the work of an authentic dinobaby. Sorry. No smart software can help this reptilian thinker.

July 20, 2025 at 926 am US Eastern time: The idea of receiving a list of relevant links on a specific topic is a good one. Several services provide me with a stream of sometimes-useful information. My current favorite service is Talkwalker, but I have several others activated. People assume that each service is comprehensive. Nothing is farther from the truth.

Let’s review a suggested article from my Google Alert received at 907 am US Eastern time.

Imagine the surprise of a person watching via Google Alerts the bound phrase “enterprise search.” Here’s the landing page for this alert. I received this message:

The snippet says “enterprise search platform Shenzhen OCT Happy Valley Tourism Co. Ltd is PRMW a good long term investment [investor sentiment]. What happens when one clicks on Google’s AI-infused message:

My browser displayed this:

If you are not familiar with Telegram Messenger-style scams and malware distribution methods, you may not see these red flags:

The link points to an article behind the WhatsApp wall
To view the content, one must install WhatsApp
The information in Google’s Alert is not relevant to “Nova Wealth Training Camp 20”

This is an example a cross service financial trickery.

Several observations:

Google’s ability to detect and block scams is evident
The relevance mechanism which identified a financial scam is based on key word matching; that is, brute force and zero smart anything
These Google Alerts have been or are now being used to promote either questionable, illegal, or misleading services.

Should an example such as this cause you any concern? Probably not. In my experience, the Google Alerts have become less and less useful. Compared to Talkwalker, Google’s service is in the D to D minus range. Talkwalker is a B plus. Feedly is an A minus. The specialized services for law enforcement and intelligence applications are in the A minus to C range.

No service is perfect. But Google? This is another example of a company with too many services, too few informed and mature managers, and a consulting leadership team disconnected from actual product and service delivery.

Will this change? No, in my opinion.

Stephen E Arnold, July 20, 2025

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under cybercrime, Financial, Google, News, Security

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.