Bing bans tech support ads—because they’re mostly scams

There's a thriving industry of tech support scammers that take advantage of unsuspecting Windows (and occasionally OS X) users, persuading them that their systems are broken or misbehaving in some way and then charging them extortionate fees to "repair" their machines, or worse, installing malware directly. Many of them cold call their victims, but others advertise in online search engines, buying up ads with tech support keywords and acquiring their victims this way.

That's no longer going to be possible on Microsoft's Bing search engine. Any and all third-party tech support services are now prohibited from advertising on Bing because of the abundance of illegitimate offerings.

This comes a few days after Google announced that it was taking further measures to protect consumers from exploitative advertisers. From July 13, Google will no longer accept ads from payday loan companies. Facebook similarly prohibits payday loan advertising on its site. The advertising gatekeepers appear to be taking a rather more proscriptive, protective stance to try to make advertising a little less harmful.