In November and December 2023, after the passing of the Online Safety Bill, we combed the biggest social media sites; Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube, as well as the two biggest search engines, Google and Bing, and found blatant fraudulent advertising.
Here, we explain our findings and why, when it comes to scams, there are simply no more excuses.
The law on scamsLast year was momentous in the fight against fraud with the passing of two key pieces of legislation:
Both of these achievements were the culmination of several years of exhaustive Which? campaigning against the scourge of scams, beginning with our 2016 super-complaint to the Payments Systems Regulator (PSR) on behalf of victims of bank transfer scams and continued via our dogged research, investigations and lobbying in the intervening years.
The fight against fraud is far from over. These new laws are not yet in force and we continue to wait for practical guidelines from the regulators tasked with enforcing the new powers, which could take months.
Fraudulent adverts
In November and December last year, we used a variety of methods including setting up fresh social media accounts for the purposes of our investigation. Tailoring these accounts to interests frequently targeted by scammers, such as shopping with big-name retailers, competitions and money saving deals, investments, weight loss gummies and help to recover money after a scam.
Last, researchers also captured scams we came across in the course of everyday browsing and scrolling for personal use.
Our research collected more than 90 examples of potentially fraudulent adverts. Whenever we were confident of something being a scam and in-site scam reporting tools were available, we reported the adverts.
Most platforms didn’t update us about the outcome of these reports, with the exception of Bing parent company Microsoft, which confirmed an advert had violated its standards and said it would act, but didn’t specify how.
Find out more: .Social media ads
On Meta’s ad library, we found Facebook and Instagram hosting multiple copycat adverts impersonating major retailers around the time of the Black Friday sales, including electricals giant Currys, plus clothing brands River Island and Marks & Spencer.
Each advert attempted to lure victims to bogus sites in a bid to extract their payment details.
On TikTok and YouTube, we found sponsored videos in which individuals without Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) authorisation gave often highly inappropriate investment advice.
While these aren’t necessarily scam videos and wouldn’t come under the remit of the new laws, they are extremely concerning and we reported these examples to the platforms.
On X, an account posted: ‘People are excited to hear about this opportunity for the new year’, alongside an advert featuring a video where Martin Lewis supposedly shared his top financial tips.
Beneath the advert was a note added by the platform with some context added by other site users, known as readers’ notes.
It warned that: ‘This is yet another crypto scam using celebrities’. Astonishingly, despite the warning the advert remained live.
This advert led to a fake BBC website and featured an article falsely using Martin Lewis to endorse a dodgy company called Quantum AI, which promotes itself as a crypto get-rich-quick platform.
This is a name that has been repeatedly flagged as a crypto scam, and is known to circulate an AI-generated deepfake video of Martin Lewis advertising its services. Martin Lewis has warned multiple times that he doesn’t do adverts.
Find out more:Search engine adverts
Both websites claimed to offer a 'free download', but included identical small print at the bottom of their websites revealing a monthly charge of £24.99.
We reported both adverts and PayByPhone confirmed that the advertisers had nothing to do with the genuine parking app.
Over on Microsoft-owned Bing, a search for ‘weight loss gummies’ turned up a sponsored result for ‘official-comparison.com’, a site blocked as a security risk.
On a different occasion, the same search term served up foryourwell.com, a website mocked up to look like a Daily Mail news article, complete with fake product endorsement by celebrity Dragon's Den entrepreneur Deborah Meaden.
Read.What the platforms said
GoogleMetaTikTokMicrosoftThe Payment Systems Regulator, X and official-comparison.com were also contacted for comment. Foryouwell.com could not be reached.
What the regulators are doing
The communications regulator Ofcom is responsible for implementing and overseeing the new rules on online fraud.
When we spoke to Ofcom about our findings it said that it has already recruited and trained expert teams to hold tech firms to account. It added that it will set new standards to make sure websites and apps are safer by design, and that it is ready to meet the scale and urgency of the challenge.
At the time of writing, Ofcom is consulting on what the rules should look like in reality, but has published proposals and guidance in the interim.
Platforms that fail to protect their users will face fines of 10% of global yearly revenue or £18m, whichever is greater. Ofcom says that it expects to publish the new rules in early 2025.
source https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/scam-adverts-are-you-still-being-targeted-a4jj68Q8cQcm