Link warning, this site a rather quite aggressive fishing scam. The Google Ad displays that the link will resolve to "www.nytimes.com", however it instead redirects to a [spam fishing site](https://lpeedxcddfgffdsxxxzzs.z13.web.core.windows.net/index...).
Good question. The ad looks like an innocuous link to www.nytimes.com, but clicking on the link actually goes to https://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk. (I didn't try actually clicking the link.)
Google's ads have been a headache in the office for a while. Older users don't know to ignore the first screen or so of fake promoted "results" in favor of the actual search results. This has led to multiple phishing attempts.
We're exploring some options for implementing something like adblocking on all traffic. I don't think people would care if we did that. Some may not even notice. Maybe they'd be happy that some sites were cleaner and faster.
Are you sure? It looked like a regular NYT ad for the Wordle site. The kind of ad reputable sites *have* to buy now, lest they be gazumped by competitors.
(It does look like the malicious ad is no longer being served, through.)
And how would one know to do that without clicking on the link first and potentially being exposed to malware?
The correct solution is for a public information campaign to inform everyone never to click on any "Ad" link in any Google search ever. It's the only way to prevent our parents and grandparents from being phished, hijacked, or worse.
My primary question is how is this possible?