Beware! Scams Lurk in Ads on Google Searches for Student Loan Relief
Searching Google for information about student loan forgiveness surfaces advertisements that either appear to violate content policies or lead people to scams, according to a watchdog group, increasing public confusion as the Joe Biden administration mulls actions on student debt.
The Tech Transparency Project, a research arm of the nonprofit Campaign for Accountability, reviewed top searches related to student loans, such as “student loan forgiveness” and “cancel student debt,” to track the ads Google serves up. Of the 242 ads the group reviewed, TTP determined that 29 breached Google’s policies or displayed “scam characteristics,” representing almost 12% of the total.
TTP found that Alphabet Inc.’s Google showed ads for services that charge “questionable fees,” imitate government agencies and request personal data from users for “unclear purposes.”
“We’d like to see them enforce the policies that they do have,” said Katie Paul, director of TTP. “Like we often see with these big tech companies, the statement of that policy is not the enforcement of that policy.”
A Google spokesperson said the company’s rules forbid advertisers from wrongly suggesting they were affiliated with the government, and that there are “strict rules” for ads related to financial services, including a ban on those that fail to disclose fees or push credit repair. “We are committed to combating financial fraud in ads and protecting consumers from scams,” the spokesperson said. “We are reviewing the ads in question and will remove any that breach our policies.'
The advertisements are particularly worrisome at a time of heightened interest in federal student loan relief, when more people are likely to be conducting these searches, TTP said.
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