Security researchers: Meta makes money from scams on Facebook
Many fake ads pop up on Facebook. Criminals want to direct their victims to dubious financial investment offers. Facebook’s parent company Meta makes good money.
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As fact-checkers from CheckFirst found out, scammers on Facebook are trying to trick users into investing money on investment platforms they provide. In order to lure their potential victims and also to attract as much attention as possible, they use pictures of celebrities.
For fraud, they use pictures of football stars like Kevin Trapp and Manuel Neuer or TV presenter Dieter Bohlen in their ads. Fake ads are coupled with the photos of the celebrities. To do this, the criminals also use the websites of influencers, which they illegally take over.
Lurid fake ads steal data from users
According to CheckFirst, the ads are placed across Europe via Facebook and are often very sensational. This is to get users to click on the ads. A picture by Dieter Bohlen, for example, is subtitled “The scandal that shocked the whole world. Dieter Bohlen didn’t know that the camera was still recording.”.
Facebook users who click on one of the fake links on Facebook often end up on pages that look like real news sites.
From there, in a second step, the victims are redirected to a form for entering personal data, which is disguised as an account opening form or media page. Among the media pages are names of well-known brands such as BBC, El Mundo, Le Monde or Spiegel.
Supposedly lucrative investment platforms rip off victims’ money
This page is intended to allow users to register with a supposedly lucrative investment platform. Once the information is submitted, scammers call their potential victim and attempt to trick them into transferring funds to the fictional investment platform.
The scam corresponds to the so-called cyber trading. Criminals lure their victims to fake investment portals they control and promise unusually high returns on their investment products. In fact, the whole construct with the fake ads is just a rip off.
Facebook diligently earns money from fake ads
The ads also violate Facebook’s policies. In the two-week period examined by CheckFirst alone, the specialists discovered around 90 Facebook pages and more than 1,500 advertisements, some of which were still online. They estimate that Facebook could have taken in around $150,000.
Check First contacted Meta and explained the problem. The company representatives demanded that the conversation must remain “confidential”. As the “Spiegel” reports, a spokeswoman for the Facebook parent company Meta also announced that it was an “industry-wide problem” and that action was being taken.
The original of this post “Meta earns money from scams on Facebook” comes from chip.de.
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