Searching for exact app names in the Play Store - eviltoast

I asked a relative to look for RealVNC on the Play Store and install it. Once they were done, I asked them to fulfill a basic task inside RealVNC and they were really confused by my instructions. I took a look at their phone, lo and behold, they had installed a different app. I asked them to repeat the install procedure while I watched. They punched in “realvnc” in the search box, two identically formatted results appeared. Their finger instinctively clicked the Install button on the top result. It was an ad. 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♀️🤦

    • Yprum@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Google being evil and assholes doesn’t remove the fact that this person literally didn’t spend a second to check what they clicked.

      Digital safety starts with everyone, despite if we need laws to regulate the asshole companies trying to mess with people’s lack of attention.

        • Yprum@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          They clicked the install button of an ad, that’s the whole point, what a weird specific detail to get hung up on anyway even if you were not wrong (which you are). It’s not just an annoying ad, it’s an ad hidden as actual results of a search with an identical install button. Google is to blame for that style to clearly try and cheat people and they deserve all the backlash and fines and more for it. But clicking a button that says install without checking what it belongs to is beyond ignoring any basic security, it’s simply stupid, and that’s on the user, not on google.