Google News has again been hit with online dating and pharmaceutical spam ads.
Over the weekend, fake news articles appeared on the news-finding service posing as stories from real titles The Village Reporter and the Hometown Huddle and Two Row Times.
The stories carried headlines like “Free hook up games – Web based instant chat rooms”, “Online dating profile codes – Onlinesportsbook”, and “Kamagra does it work – Sildenafil citrate tablets 100mg india”.
When clicked through from Google Alerts, the links took you to pages for adult dating and cam sites like DirtyTinder, and to websites selling pharmaceuticals.
The fake stories also appeared on the Google News site, alongside real stories about online dating.
Although the spam stories are still showing on Google News, when clicked through, they now redirect to the real pages for The Village Reporter and the Hometown Huddle and Two Row Times publications.
This comes just over a month after the news-gathering platform was hit with a set of spam ads for online dating and pharmaceuticals.
After being notified of the breach, Google responded confirming the issue was on the publisher side, and had been resolved, with one of the publications confirming it had been hacked.
Read more about the story here.