Sceptism is the best weapon against scam adverts on the internet - David Behrens
There are a number of places in Britain where one can hang around and spot passing celebrities, if one is so inclined. The centre court at Wimbledon, for instance. Or the Groucho Club in Soho. But not the East Riding coast.
Withernsea, if you know it, is Yorkshire’s most southerly seaside resort, a destination manufactured by Victorian entrepreneurs to take advantage of the new rail line from Hull. Sadly, that closed 60 years ago and the little town has been something of a backwater since then.
That being the case, it was a surprise to learn that Cliff Richard apparently now lives there. What’s more, he’s in good company: Judy Finnigan, formerly of This Morning With Richard and Judy, has also taken up residence.
I know this because the internet says so. “Once a legendary star, now she lives alone in Withernsea,” I read, beneath an unflattering picture of Ms Finnigan. In Withernsea? Alone? Not with Richard?
On another page the same headline appears below a picture of Sir Cliff. Does he know he and Judy are neighbours? What parties they could have!
But wait: two days later, the wording has changed. The pictures are identical but they’re now in Filey. This can mean only one thing: they’ve got mobile homes. Today Filey, tomorrow St Tropez.
Or perhaps the internet has misread my location and given the game away. But did someone really think they were fooling us; that visitors to a website were agog to discover Cliff and Judy’s secret life by the seaside?
Unfortunately, yes they did. And it’s not a new phenomenon. As far back as 1926, exactly a century ago, the American journalist and critic HL Mencken observed in a newspaper not unlike the one you are reading now, that no-one ever lost money by underestimating the public – or, as he put it, “the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people”.
Mencken had in mind a world of dubious printed adverts, of hucksters and street-corner shysters peddling doubtful wares from the back of carts which they weaved artfully between passing policemen. Say what you like about 1920s conmen but at least they put some effort into their work.
Today the internet has automated it all. Anyone who can hold a laptop the right way round and is possessed of the necessary lack of morality can profit from the algorithms of companies that exist to attract eyeballs to rampant nonsense about stars living by themselves in Withernsea.
Once you click the link you cross a Rubicon into a world of dodgy heat pump grants, cryptocurrency and phoney financial advice from Martin Lewis clones. Every few click-throughs deposit another dollar into someone’s bank account.
And it’s all very well to tell yourself you’re too clever to believe Judy Finnigan is eating fish and chips outside Withernsea Lighthouse – the worst clickbait is far more plausible.
One of Judy’s successors on the sofa shows that fill morning TV is Dr Hilary Jones, a genuine GP who has been broadcasting since the 1980s and whose word carries some weight. So if your eye was caught by a video of him promoting a product he said would reduce blood sugar levels, your interest might be piqued.
Likewise, a screenshot from TV of Sir Richard Branson announcing a “breakthrough that could end diabetes forever”, might give you renewed hope for the health of someone close to you. But it would be a false dawn.
These and many other pronouncements that seem too good to be true are literally that. The videos are fakes, produced by the same artificial intelligence that generates bogus footage of politicians and other public figures to stoke division on social media. Motive is the only difference: some fakers are out to make money; others to make trouble.
And fake adverts sometimes appear where you least expect them. Those Branson videos were discovered by the consumer organisation Which? on Google’s own news site, an automatically compiled feed that ticks none of the boxes for impartiality, accuracy or balance.
On Yahoo’s website, it found an ambiguously-worded advert that led to a fake BBC news page promoting a suspicious investment platform that “people in Withernsea need to know about”. The name of the town depends where you are, of course.
The Online Safety Act of 2023 has tightened the rules on misleading adverts to some extent but the law means nothing to the people behind these scams. Technology enables, not inhibits, them.
For the rest of us, scepticism is the best weapon. The internet, for all its benefits, is still bandit country for advertisers – and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Not even if it’s Cliff Richard walking his dog on Withernsea prom.