According to a watchdog group, users searching for information on Google about student loan repayment waivers leads to advertisements that either violate policies on the content or lead to scams, forcing the Biden administration to think about taking action on students’ debt.
More into it
Campaign for Accountability, a nonprofit whose research arm, the Tech Transparency Project (TTP), reviewed top searches on student loan forgiveness of student debt cancel and Google’s ads on the related topic. TTP reviewed 242 ads, of which 29 violated Google policies or displaced characteristics of a scam.
TTP discovered that the Ads shown on Google for services asked for questionable fees behaved like government agencies, and asked for personal data from users without giving clear reasons.
A spokesperson from Google said that the company strictly forbade the advertisers from suggesting that they were affiliated with the government. They also had strict rules about financial services ads, including a ban on those who failed to disclose their fees.
TTP said these advertisements cause worry as people are conducting more searches in times of increased interest in student loan relief.
Since March 2020, the federal student loan repayment has been suspended, with Biden Administration extending the moratorium till August 31. The repayment breaks have relieved borrowers but also increased their anxiety about future obligations. In the US, 45 million people own nearly $1.7 trillion debt in student loans, according to a Washington-based nonprofit- Student Borrower Protection Centre.
Ben Kaufman, the research and investigation director at Student Borrower Protection Centre says that the third-party service providers manage federal student loans. Their poor service and the government’s lack of clarity about future student loan relief have made these borrowers vulnerable to scams.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau 2015 had urged Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google not to allow suspicious ads to appear on their platform related to students’ loans. The FTC, along with the district of Columbia and 11 other states, made efforts to combat scams linked to student loan relief.
Michelle Gregales, attorney at FTC financial practices division, says this enforcement remains in focus. She said that scammers read the news too and follow trends that allow them to pitch accordingly to consumers.
The TTP project has pointed out in its report about a handful of ads that came in Google search results. A case in point was the Modify Student loans which encouraged visitors to enroll in the student loan forgiveness program at $39 monthly fees. The FTC states that charging borrowers before providing assistance was unlawful.
On another page of its website, the Modify Student loans indicated that they would collect user information from their tax returns which were not allowed under Google policy to collect personal data without specifying the purpose.
