Fraud in advertising

2025: Customer inflation under the guise of a service center of PC manufacturer MSI revealed a "gray" zone in the legislation of the Russian Federation

In mid-August, the Judicial Collegium for Civil Cases[1] of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation published a ruling^[1] in the case, in which it indicated to the judges of lower instances the need to study the issue of belonging to the repair shop website found via the Internet for foreign-made equipment. The dispute between the client of the Taiwanese computer equipment manufacturer MSI and the "gray" repair shop passed three courts and reached consideration in the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation.

The discussed definition was adopted in response to Anna Khachaturian's complaint to the MSI repair shop, which allegedly violated the client's rights during the repair of its system unit. As stated in the definition of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, in connection with the malfunction of the MSI Trident 3 computer, the plaintiff found a service center for its repair on the Internet - "MSI" - and handed it over to a person who introduced himself as a courier of this company, its system unit for repair, having received from him a copy of the service agreement. During telephone conversations, employees of the service center reported on changes in the timing and cost of providing services, and subsequently - on the disposal of the computer, offering the plaintiff to pay minor compensation.

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Фото: MSI

Realizing that she was deceived, the girl appealed to the court with a demand to terminate the contract for the provision of services, return of property or full payment of funds, as well as compensation for moral damage, and the Golovinsky District Court of Moscow even satisfied her claim.

However, the Second Court of Cassation of General Jurisdiction sent the case for reconsideration, during which the MSI company put forward a counterclaim to invalidate (null and void) the service agreement. As a result of re-consideration in the courts of first and appellate instance, the service agreement submitted by the courier was declared null and void, since it was signed by an unauthorized person - a courier named Rumyantsev who received the system unit allegedly did not work at the MSI service center, and the prints of the seals in the contract do not correspond to the genuine seals of the service center. At the same time, of course, it was not checked whether the MSI company itself has the right to repair MSI equipment.

After hearing the case in three instances, the bench of the Supreme Court did not agree with the second decision, stating that the courts did not examine the content of the defendant's website. Turning to the court with a lawsuit, the girl indicated that she had found a service center for repairing the system unit she owned on the Internet, where the MSI website was posted, containing data about this legal entity, advertising services and contact information. The contract contained the name of the MSI service center, its address, TIN and OGRN, an imprint of the seal, so the plaintiff had no reason to doubt that she was transferring a computer for repair through a courier to the service center she had chosen via the Internet.

It should be noted that the girl seems to have thought that she turned to the official service center of the manufacturer of her computer - the names MSI (short for Micro-Star Int) and MSI LLC look similar. TAdviser tried to repeat the path of finding an official representative office of MSI, and here's what came of it. It turned out that the first link to Yandex is indeed MSI Russia with the address ru.msi.com, where you can find a list of the manufacturer's official service centers.

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Фото: TAdviser

However, above the search results there are three ad snipes (they are marked with the keyword "Promo"), of which the second is marked as "MSI Service Center." As you can replace it, its address - msy-profi.ru - has nothing to do with the MSI manufacturer, since its name is misspelled. However, if you look at the site, you can see that it belongs to IP Zharkova Ksenia Aleksandrovna and clearly has nothing to do with MSI, although it is stylized as a service center of this manufacturer.

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Фото: TAdviser

In the case under discussion, the courts of first and appellate instance did not examine the question of belonging to the defendant of the ISI website, negotiations and correspondence of the plaintiff with the specified service center, as well as the details of the disputed contract, in particular the address, OGRN and TIN of the service center, for their compliance with the details of the defendant contained in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. At the same time, the courts shifted the obligation to prove the indicated circumstances of the conclusion of the transaction to the plaintiff, who does not have the relevant information and means to identify a false offer of services on behalf of the defendant. It was on this basis that the decision was made to reconsider the case for a re-study of the connection between the site, the "courier," the service center, and, possibly, the computer manufacturer.

In addition, the Transparent Business database^[2] indicates that MSI LLC is mainly engaged in real estate by its type of activity. At the same time, the company did not indicate at all that it receives income from the repair of computer and other equipment.

I do not think that the position of the RF Armed Forces in this case is not dangerous for Russian companies, "lawyer Yulia Gurieva, managing partner of Seven Hills Legal, told TAdviser. - In fact, a bona fide market player needs to show the lack of his connection with fraudsters. Of course, proving negative facts is not a pleasant task, but since the consumer, on the other hand, the position of the RF Armed Forces is quite reasonable.

Now the site on the Internet can host any service center. Technologies for attracting victims to the sites of fake service centers have also been worked out - it is shown above that it is enough to order advertising from Yandex to be in search results even higher than a real manufacturer. Therefore, computer manufacturers have long faced the problem of identifying and stopping the activities of fake service centers so that their bona fide buyers do not fall victim to such litigation.

In the case of banks, both full copies of sites and individual resources imitating shares from credit institutions are used, - Igor Sergienko, director of the Solar Aura Center for Monitoring External Digital Threats, cited TAdviser cases from his practice. - About the same thing happens in the e-commerce segment. But in the field of industry and production, the situation is much more interesting. Attackers, of course, also copy official sites, but often create separate fake resources for subsidiaries, even those that do not have their own sites.

Especially clearly, according to the expert, this is manifested in the segment of the oil and gas industry. Fraudsters create sites for oil depots, oil ports, and so on. For this, a special term even appeared - Russian Oil Scam. A similar situation is observed in the mineral fertilizer market. This kind of site should inspire confidence in potential victims, while the contact details of fake distributors and service centers will differ from the official ones.

Yes, fraudsters can use such a scheme, "Ekaterina Edemskaya, an analyst engineer at Gazinformservice, told TAdviser. - This can happen, for example, through the creation of fake sites that host company data, such as address, TIN, OGRN. If the company cannot promptly prove its non-involvement in such actions, it may face legal consequences. In this regard, it is crucial for organizations to monitor and monitor regularly so that their data are not used without consent.

The expert recommends using specialized platforms such as BrandMonitor or BrandAnalytics, which offer services for tracking brand mentions on Russian media and the Internet, including sites with fraudulent offers and fakes. To check the domains and register them, you can use the Whois and Reg.ru services, where you can get information about who exactly registered the disputed domain. However, scammers use close names (as in the example above MSI - msy), which makes it difficult for such search engines to work.

In addition, it is possible to use tools for analyzing site activity, for example SpyWords, which track keywords and identify sites that use the names and details of companies. For search spam, such systems may be more effective than searching for a specific brand. It is important to regularly analyze the data obtained to prevent threats of fraud and falsification.

In 2022, the Ministry of Digital Science launched the Antifishing system - an information system for monitoring phishing sites, designed to automate and increase the efficiency of processes for collecting, systematizing, processing, analyzing and storing information about phishing resources and activity in the Russian Federation, where you can file a complaint about a fraudulent site, - explained to TAdviser the current situation with fake sites Marina Koprusova, director of digital hygiene at Rostelecom. - Today such complaints can be filed on the website "Public services." Complaints about the presence of illegal information on the pages of sites on the Internet are accepted by Roskomnadzor.

According to Marina Koprusova, there is a separate market for services to damage the company's reputation. Usually these services are used by unscrupulous competitors. Here it is possible to create fake sites with details, and create separate pages with negative reviews, and aggressively comment on the company's goods and services on social networks and information channels.

Even until recently, the concept prevailed in business: it is not we who suffer from twin sites, but inattentive people and organizations, why then spend money on fighting such resources, "Igor Sergienko explained to TAdviser the situation in the search market for phishing sites. - Now the situation is changing and I would like to hope that this judicial precedent, although not case law in Russia, will be another step towards the improvement of cyberspace.

If it becomes clear that fraudulent schemes with phishing sites cause significant damage to small and medium-sized businesses, then the demand for such services will grow. Experts believe that so far the losses are not very great, otherwise some notable players would have already entered the market. The technical complexity of finding fakes also matters. However, the precedent, when the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation requires companies to prove that they are not related to service offers on an external site, can stimulate companies that care about their reputation to work out possible ways to solve the problem of finding and removing fake takes of their websites.

2021: Russian given 10 years in prison in the United States for selling ads on fake Internet pages

On November 10, 2021, the US Department of Justice announced that Alexander Zhukov was found guilty of Internet fraud. The 41-year-old Russian was sentenced by an American court to 10 years in prison, and will also have to pay more than $3.8 million. Read more here.

2019: Scam scheme that quickly discharges millions of Android smartphones revealed

In March 2019, a giant fraud scheme was revealed in which hidden video ads were launched in Android apps. Because of her, the devices quickly discharged and personal data was transferred.

Fraudsters used services that pay for viewing ads, and made it so that users allegedly launched video ads that were not actually visible to device owners. To implement the scam, the attackers used popular applications that download millions of users.

In March 2019, a giant fraud scheme was revealed in which hidden video ads were launched in Android apps

The fraud was revealed by Protected Media, a fraud detection company. The existence of such a scheme was confirmed to BuzzFeed News by the developers of applications that receive complaints from users that their programs transmit too much traffic and quickly drain batteries in smartphones.

Journalists and cybersecurity experts conducted an investigation that indicated involvement in a fraudulent scheme of an Israeli company with offices in New York Aniview. She is developing a platform for video advertising. Aniview denies involvement in fraud and, moreover, claims that the platform, banners and code created by one of the subsidiaries were used by someone to distribute malicious elements.

BuzzFeed News reviewers provided a schematic description of the method used to deceive advertisers and advertising platforms.

The developer places pop-up ads on their app that the customer has ordered. Third-party services are used to earn more and automate advertising revenue. For example, one of the developers surveyed by BuzzFeed News is collaborating with Twitter MoPub, one of the largest exchanges for exchanging advertising mobile traffic.

According to Protected Media, it was through MoPub that most of the ads that scammers earned from were purchased. This does not mean that the service was along with them, but he received a commission for ads purchased using his tools.

Fraudsters have learned to automatically play video ads that are registered by the system as viewed, but in fact the user does not see them. In such a scenario, developers receive a small fee for banner ads visible to users, but swindlers earn much more from including higher-paying ads in these ads that gadget owners do not see. Ultimately, it is the brands whose ads have been featured in hidden video players who lose money by giving it to scammers.

Fraudsters buy cheap ads placed inside applications and fill it with several video players with harmless fake advertising from manufacturers, "said Asaf Greiner, CEO of Protected Media.

In order not to lose money due to advertising to bots, you can use specialized services that provide statistics up to a specific domain from which the inappropriate display came. Vice President of Product Promotion Management for one of these services - DoubleVerify - Roy Rosenfeld says the company discovered similar video ads in apps in late 2018. According to Rosenfeld, scammers have learned very well to hide ads and hide traces of their actions, they come up with very complex monetization schemes. DoubleVerify registers at least 60 million fraudulent requests for video ads. Experts value the business at millions of dollars a month.^[3]

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