  The targeted direct-to-customer marketing of unapproved stem cell treatments
by a questionable online industry is directed at vulnerable users who search
the Internet in the hope of a cure. This behavior especially poses a threat to
individuals who find themselves in hopeless and desperate phases in their
lives. They might show low reluctance to try therapies that solely promise a
cure but are not scientifically proven to do so. In the worst case, they suffer
serious side-effects. Therefore, this thesis examines the display of
advertisements of unapproved stem cell treatments for Parkinson's Disease,
Multiple Sclerosis, Diabetes on Google's results page. The company announced a
policy change in September 2019 that was meant to prohibit and ban the
practices in question. However, there was evidence that those ads were still
being delivered. A browser extension for Firefox and Chrome was developed and
distributed to conduct a crowdsourced Black Box analysis. It was delivered to
volunteers and virtual machines in Australia, Canada, the USA and the UK. Data
on search results, advertisements and top stories was collected and analyzed.
The results showed that there still is questionable advertising even though
Google announced to purge it from its platform.
