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TODAY’S TECH ALERT
Paying the wrong guy
ChatGPT/Kim Komando
🤯 WOW! You google your own utility bill. You click the first result. You pay it. Weeks later, you find out you paid a stranger, not your utility company, and your real bill is still sitting there unpaid.
The Short Version: Search ads can impersonate the company you’re trying to pay. Check the rules below for safe payments.
📖 Read time: 2 minutes
The FTC put out a warning about something most of us do without thinking twice: searching for a company’s payment page instead of going straight to a bookmark or the bill in hand.
Here’s the trick.
Dishonest companies buy search ads and use real company names as key words, so their ad shows up first, right above or instead of the genuine biller. Click it, and you land on a page that looks like it belongs to your utility, your phone carrier or your doctor’s office. It doesn’t.
💸 This already cost people millions
This isn’t hypothetical. The FTC settled with a company called Doxo. According to the FTC, Doxo bought search ads and used company names and logos like AT&T, Spectrum and Labcorp to make itself look like a real payment site.
People paid through Doxo, thinking they were paying their actual biller, and got hit with surprise “delivery fees” on top. Some got quietly enrolled in a recurring subscription they never knowingly agreed to. Check your statements for that one. It hides in plain sight.
⏰ The part that stings
In many cases, Doxo took your money electronically, then printed a paper check and dropped it in the mail. Your real bill sat unpaid for days or weeks while you assumed it was handled. The FTC says people got hit with late fees, had utilities shut off and even had insurance lapse.
You did everything “right.” You still got burned. And this went on for years. Tens of thousands of people complained, and search engine employees privately called the ads “super misleading” back in 2021. The ads kept running anyway.
Nobody double-checks a bill payment. You search, you click, you pay, you move on. That’s the routine these ads are built to exploit.
There’s no sketchy phone call, no obvious red flag. Just a paid ad sitting in the search results you’re likely to trust.
🔒 Pay it right
Never search for a company’s payment page. Use the number or link on your paper bill or a bookmark you saved yourself.
If you must search, scroll past every result marked “Ad” or “Sponsored” before you click anything.
Look for the fee line. Your real biller doesn’t charge a delivery fee to take your money. A middleman does.
Paid through a site and something feels off? Call the biller directly, using the number on a past statement, not the number on the page you just visited. Confirm the payment posted.
Scan your credit card and bank statements for small recurring charges you don’t recognize. That’s how the sneaky subscriptions surface.
Got burned? Fight back. Dispute the charge with your card company and report it at ReportFraud.ftc.gov. That’s how this case got built in the first place.
Watch out for sketchy links in your favorite AI chatbot answers, too. Nothing’s sacred.
One rule to remember: The search bar is for finding information, not for paying bills. Your bill already knows the way home.
🏠 Get proactive
Bill impersonators steal a payment. Title thieves steal something bigger: the deed to your home.
Scammers forge your signature, file fake paperwork with your county and take out loans against a house they don’t own. And here’s the part that keeps me up at night: The county doesn’t call you when someone files against your property. Nobody does.
How it usually goes down:
A thief pulls your property records online. They’re public, and yes, that includes your signature on past documents.
They forge a deed transfer or home equity paperwork and file it with the county. Most recorder offices don’t verify signatures. They just stamp and file.
Crooks borrow against your equity or even “sell” the house, then vanish with the money.
You often don’t find out until a collector calls, a lien shows up or a foreclosure notice lands in your mailbox.
Paid off home? You’re the prime target.
Thieves hunt for all that equity sitting there with no bank watching the title. Untangling the scam can take months of lawyers, court dates and money out of your pocket.
That’s your cash walking out the door for a crime you didn’t even see happen.
Home Title Lock watches what the county won’t:
Around-the-clock monitoring of your property’s title
Urgent alerts the moment someone tries to file anything against it
A Title History Report, so you can see right now if anything’s lurking on your title
📱 Text-worthy: The FTC says scammers buy search ads to impersonate your utility or medical biller. Click the wrong one, and you pay a stranger while your real bill stays unpaid. Skip the search, use your bookmark or the number on your paper bill.
🎯 Send this to the bill payer in your family, especially anyone who googles “pay my electric bill” every month. That habit has cost people millions.
Photo credit(s): ChatGPT/Kim Komando
Disclosure: This alert is sponsored by Home Title Lock. I only partner with brands that I personally use or believe provide significant value to my community.