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donmcronald
> A Google spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the company does "not tolerate this misleading activity" and that it had fixed the issue.

Was it their spokesperson or a comedian that said that? Google AdWords is becoming the funnel for stuff like that. My dad had the same thing happen when trying to contact Amazon about fraudulent CC charges.

First you get scammed and then you get scammed again if you trust Google to find support numbers. Thankfully my dad caught on when they started asking too many questions.

When I shut off my ad blocker and tested it on mobile, I got a continuously changing number as the top ad.

JCharante
One time I saw a couple charges I didn't recognize on my Discover card, so I called their number (on the back of the card).

Eventually, to request a new card I had to give the phone agent an SMS OTP from Discover that said something to the effect of "do not share this OTP with anybody, Discover will not ask you for this code". I quadruple checked that I had called the right number and not someone who was typo-squatting.

jtokoph
My messages from discover say they will not call me and ask for the code but they will ask if you call them.
JCharante
Ah does it say that last part in the message? I tried to retrive my text message from last year but was unsuccessful.
bryan0
This happened to me when talking to Amazon support. I told the guy I wasn’t giving him the OTP and he apologized and said “I understand”. I’m pretty sure it was legit but who knows. I just never give it out.
cute_boi
One of my friend thought he was talking to airline company, and after paying extra $300 for agent he realized he was talking with some agents.

Google ads sucks. Thankfully, I don't face such issues due to ublock origin.

jtokoph
I recently tried calling a local restaurant’s number via the google maps listing. The number was changed to call a prankster who now sends me “wanna play a game?” texts like from the movie Saw.
DANmode
Well, that's absolutely terrifying given what you can do with a phone number today.
ShadowBanThis01
And it's depressing that so many people have given their phone numbers to OpenAI.
flangola7
In what sense?
ShadowBanThis01
A huge number of people have given their real cellular number to a company on the Internet, for unknown purposes and without real justification.
thanksbucko
There’s not very many numbers and they are all on the internet anyway. What can we do?
ShadowBanThis01
I don't give my cellular number out to many entities. For questionable entities, I give my Google Voice number. But OpenAI won't accept that, or any other VOIP or burner service. So, they can shove it.
TurkishPoptart
I resisted this for weeks until I gave in to use ChatGPT. Le sigh.
floydnoel
If you don’t want to do this, you can use ChatGPT and many other models via Poe.com, with an email sign-up.
yomlica8
Can you use one of those throwaway SMS services for this?
ShadowBanThis01
I tried Google Voice and a burner app, to no avail. So "Open"AI can shove it right up their fraudulently-named ass.
ShadowBanThis01
Another example of the ever-worsening quality of Google's search results. It's pathetic that they now suck at their core business.
markus92
Same thing happened to my wife. She called Wayfair customer service, except got a scamming call center that wanted her to install some remote control app on her phone so she could send photos of the broken product. Looking where she got the number from, it was some kind of Adwords scam that seemed to have bought they keywords 'wayfair customer service'.
nyanmatt
Happened to me trying to schedule service for my vehicle. Searching for the exact dealership name gave me a phone number to a scammer trying to get my credit card info.

Did not know this was so widespread. Stay vigilant friends.