Fraudsters could create and post fake adverts to target victims and spread misinformation within hours, according to the consumer advice campaign group Which?.
While legitimate businesses of all sizes use these platforms to advertise their products or services, in recent years, fraudsters have also used fake companies and false information to lure in victims and steal significant sums of money from them. Which? created two linked fake companies – a water brand named Remedii; and Natural Hydration, an online service offering pseudo health and hydration advice – to see how easy it is for fraudsters to create and promote false adverts.
Which? found that Google just required advertisers to have a Gmail account to create adverts and while it did review adverts submitted, it did not verify if the business existed or was legitimate, nor ask for proof of ID.
In under an hour, the adverts Which? created for both fake businesses were approved by Google and garnered nearly 100,000 impressions over the space of a month. A fake advert for ‘Natural Hydration’ appeared above the official NHS Scotland pages when users searched for “hydration advice”, Which? reports.
Which? found it was easy to create a fake business page using a personal Facebook account, which only requires an email address or mobile number to set up. Which? created a business page for Natural Hydration and produced a range of posts with pseudo health advice to promote it. Which? paid Facebook to promote this page, which garnered 500 likes in a week.
Harry Rose, Which? Magazine Editor, said: “Fraudulent activity is rife on social media and search engines and our investigation has exposed that a lack of controls on Facebook and Google has made it worryingly easy for fraudsters to create adverts promoting scams or fake products and services.
“Tech giants earn billions from advertising and should be putting more resources into preventing fraudsters from abusing their platforms, so consumers can trust that the adverts they see are legitimate. The government should widen its definition of “online harms” to include fake adverts and content, which would mean future regulation would require more action from tech companies to tackle false advertising.”
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) last month launched a UK Scam Ad Alert system in partnership with digital advertising and social media platforms, including Facebook and Google, against bogus ads. As the ASA said, online paid-for ads may link to fraudulent content, particularly crypto investment, such as Bitcoin, scams. Many scam ads of this type use false stories or doctored images of celebrities, and misleadingly imply celebrities have endorsed a service. Consumers can now report scam ads appearing in paid-for space online. The ASA will send an alert to all participating platforms with details of the scam ad, as well as to publishers when the ad appeared on a publisher owned site. If they locate them, partners will remove the offending ad and suspend the advertiser’s account.
