Eight days.
Meta announced its new AI, Muse, on Tuesday, September 8. By Wednesday, September 16, a fake "Muse Ads" website was already live.
It wasn't alone. Security researchers at Island found a whole family of them: fake ad tools dressed up as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Manus.
Each one is pitched as an AI helper for your ads.
And each one, in Island's words, "was built around the same action: Connect."
Press it and sign in, and you hand over your ad account. Your budget. Your card on file.
The good news: a 10-second test spots the fake sign-in window.
Right after this: how the trap works, and the test.
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Right. Back to it.
How the trap works
It starts with an invitation email. A shiny new AI ad tool, with a familiar name on it.
You land on a page built around one big "Connect" button.
You click it. A Google sign-in window pops up, with Google's address showing at the top. Looks normal.
But that window is a picture, drawn inside the fake page.
The creepy part: a real person sits on the other end, choosing each screen you see.
Your password again. The code from your phone. A sign-in prompt to approve. Island calls it a "human-operated phishing platform."
Once they're in, they add their own admins, lower your access, and run their ads on your budget. Or sell the account.
Island's summary: "For the victim, the card is the easy part." Getting the account back can take weeks or months.
The 10-second test
When a sign-in window pops up, grab it by the top and try to drag it outside your browser.
A real pop-up is its own browser window. It moves wherever you drag it.
The fake one is part of the web page. It can't leave. As BleepingComputer puts it, these fakes "cannot be moved outside the browser window or resized."
Then look at the address bar at the very top of your browser, the real one (the one inside the pop-up is painted on). It shows the site you're actually on. If that isn't the company you meant to visit, close the tab.
(Ten seconds. Less time than it takes to find your phone for the code.)
Three rules that keep you out
Only connect tools you found yourself. Go to the vendor's own site, never through a link in an invite email.
Use passkeys where you can. A code from your phone can be typed into a fake page (that's exactly what this one asks for). A passkey only works on the real site.
Check who has access, every week. In Google Ads, review the user list and the related managers, and remove anyone you don't recognise. Keep 2-Step Verification on (Google won't reimburse a hacked account without it). In Meta, open the Security Center in your business settings and check who has access there too.
If you already clicked
Don't panic. Move fast.
Change the password and sign out everywhere.
Check every ad account that login can reach. New admins or partners, changed recovery email or phone, spend nobody approved. Remove anyone you don't recognise.
Report it to Google or Meta straight away. Google's help page says billing investigations take 10 to 15 business days, and reimbursement needs 2-Step Verification turned on.
Make it stick
Save this as a note, or a Monday reminder:
Ad account check (Mondays, 5 min)
1. Users and admins: anyone I don't recognise?
2. Partners / related managers: anyone new?
3. Recovery email and phone: still mine?
4. Spend: anything I didn't approve?
5. Any "AI tool" invite this week? Only via the vendor's own site.Five minutes a week. Much cheaper than a stranger's ad campaign on your card.
Let AI do the work, and stay the one person who knows exactly what's connected to what. That's the whole idea behind The One-Person Company Playbook.
It's the complete setup for running a business where AI does the work of a full team. Inside:
A company folder with your brief, pipeline tracker and invoice log already laid out, so any AI picks up where you left off
Thirty AI roles across six departments, from sales to finance, ready to use
Six jobs that run on a clock: the morning briefing, follow-ups, invoice checks and more
The step-by-step path from picking a business model to your first paying customer
Works on Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or Grok, whichever you already pay for.
The catch: it takes about eight hours over a weekend to set up. After that, it's yours. $97, one-time (down from $297).
Talk tomorrow,
Zephyr
P.S. Open your ad account's user list today and count the names. Hit reply if one of them surprises you.