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Devastated father says his 9-year-old son spent $118,000 on YouTube ad campaigns for his Minecraft channel using a company credit card — bill racked up in just three weeks was supposed to be one $20 (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 1 week ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 44 points 1 week ago* (10 children)

Seems to me that this is a dual fail. The father should have monitored his kid more closely and not used his company card for this, but Google should have noticed the unusual spending pattern and flagged it somehow—I mean, it looks like something someone might do using a stolen card, in which case Google might never have gotten its money, if you need a self-interested reason why they should have been keeping a more careful eye on this.

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  • [–] 45 points 1 week ago* (4 children)

    Why would a $120k spend on a business card (entered by the cardholder on an advertising account under their name) be suspicious?

    This doesn't follow the pattern of a stolen card at all.

    EDIT: Dad set up the YT brand account using his employer's Google Workspace. He handed all his work emails and sensitive auth to the kid too. Dad is stupid as fuck.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    $120K spent advertising a kid's Minecraft channel is suspicious. The initial flag should just have been for "card not normally used suddenly spending a shit-ton of money—does this look legit?" After that, a ten-second check of what was being advertised would have shown that something was fishy.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 week ago

    A $120K marketing budget for a single beat of a campaign would match a company with credit cards with limits that large. Usually you don't use a credit card for marketing spending though and your Google bill is paid by a bank account. It should have been flagged but they could be using their company cc's recklessly making this a normal transaction.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    Two weeks ago, Google served me a sponsored link that led right to a malicious site trying to install malware. Not only did they not prevent this from being the top hit, they even profited off of it.

    The link looked a little dodgy in hindsight. To me. I feel like a company like Google should pick up on it. But they just don't give af anymore.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    Having an adblocker is basic security.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago*

    I forgot to mention that this was on a freshly installed osx. I had just pulled Firefox and was looking for the homebrew website. Google was the default search. I normally have it set to the duck or qwant but I just hadn't come around do it yet.

    I also never click on the sponsored links as a matter of principle but I was in a hurry and I was getting sloppy. But was always because I didn't want them to have even more money, not because I thought those links could be harmful.

    They only have to be successful once...

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  • [–] 5 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    You assume Google cares or held to account about your privacy and protection like any physical businesses have such as banks, shops or phone companies??

    Have you seen how little regard they give to the meet app spam situation? It is telling how little they have gotten away with care about their consumers.

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