barney

Today, when you login into your Google adwords account, you may
discover you owe to Google thousands and thousands of dollars for an
ad campaign that you never created. How? Keep reading…
On lazy Saturday morning, January 03, 2004, just before leaving home
for a trip I have got an idea to check quickly how my Goggle adwords
campaign is running. I was sure I would take a quick look, and in a
minute would leave. In a minute I was sitting in front of my PC with
my hands trembling – my humble low-budget campaign was deleted, and a
new one has been created: the one with cost-per-click of $50.00 and
daily budget of $200,000.00. As Google merrily promises, I already
"started seeing the results".
Lucky me, this new campaign seemed to be started only few hours ago –
so, my balance was not a catastrophe yet. You can imagine what it
would be on Monday morning…
It took me few moments to delete this new campaign; it took longer to
change my password, and to think about (and check) what else could be
hacked: my credit card account, my bank account etc.
Of course, I complained to Google immediately. In four days I have got
a first reply:

In reviewing your account this evening, I do not see that anyone other
than someone with access to your email address made changes to your
account. I also see that the campaign with the high daily budget has
now been deleted and therefore, not running. Is there someone in your
company that has access to your email address and login details to
your AdWords account that could have logged in and created the
campaign you are referring to?

So, it was I who was crazy, and it was I who wanted to spend $200K
daily for advertising. Next day they told it to me more directly:

The only way someone can access your account is if they have your
login and password. In reviewing the account history, I do see that
you have accessed the account from different IP addresses and that
when the 2nd campaign was created, the IP address is the same as one
you have used when working on Campaign 1.

And later:

In reviewing your account history, I found that there were no
suspicious activities in that the same IP address was used to create
and make changes in both of your campaigns. Further, there is no way
for anyone to access your account unless they have the login and
password. We do not see complaints of this kind with the exception of
companies where multiple employees that have the login information. We
do not believe that there was a breach in security.

That is, "man, stop bugging us; if you wish to spend $200K daily, it
is your problem. Just put the money here and enjoy the results".

Now, let me ask you few questions, questions that I asked Goggle
adwords support and got no answer:
- When you start a new campaign, do you receive any notification, or
thank you letter from Google? I never did. If I received such an
email, I would be alerted immediately, otherwise it was only my good
luck. By Monday morning I could have spent thousands and thousands…
- Do you receive a monthly statement with your credit card charges
from Google? I never did. eBay sends it, PayPal sends it. Everybody
send it, save Google.
- What does this "start seeing the results in 15 minutes" motto have
to do with the fraud protection? If someone has stolen your password,
what does Google do to protect you? Nothing??

I am not talking about how effective or ineffective Google adwords is.
How SAFE is it?? When was the last time you checked your adwords
account? A week ago? Keep going. One day the results could surprise
you…