The tech giant has filed legal action and sent out numerous cease and desist letters against advertisers running scam ads on its platforms.
Meta has filed multiple lawsuits against advertisers in Brazil, China and Vietnam in its bid to tackle ‘celeb-bait’ scam ads and fraud schemes on its platforms.
Celeb-bait ads misuse the images of celebrities and content creators to trick users into engaging with the ad, which leads to a scam website. These sites will often ask people to share personal information, including payment details or send money.
While celebrities do feature on many legitimate ads, these scam ads are designed to look real and therefore are often not easy to detect.
Meta has launched legal action against three advertisers it says has used deceptive, AI-driven tactics to defraud users.
The first case targets Brazil-based Vitor Lourenço de Souza and Milena Luciani Sanchez, who allegedly used manipulated images and voices of celebrities to promote fraudulent healthcare products.
A second names B&B Suplementos e Cosméticos Ltda. (Brites Corp), Brites Academia de Treinamento Ltda, Daniel de Brites Macieira Cordeiro, and José Victor de Brites Chaves de Araújo, as part of a scam operation in Brazil.
According to Meta, the group used deepfakes of a prominent healthcare professional to market healthcare products without regulatory approval. It also allegedly sold courses teaching the same tactics.
The third action is directed against Shenzhen Yunzheng Technology Co, a company based in China accused of running celeb-bait ads to lure users in the US, Japan and other markets into fraudulent investment schemes.
Alongside the lawsuit, the tech giant has also developed a programme that protects celebrities whose images are repeatedly used in these schemes. It currently protects the images of more than 50,000 celebrities and public figures around the world.
Scammers used ‘cloaking’ to trick ad review systems
Meta has also filed legal action against Lý Văn Lâm, a Vietnamese advertiser who used cloaking to circumvent the platform’s ad review process.
Cloaking is a technique used by scammers to conceal the true nature of a website linked to an ad from ad review systems.
Lý Văn Lâm allegedly used scam ads to offer highly discounted items from brands such as Longchamp, in exchange for completing a survey. Users who engaged with these ads were redirected to websites and asked for credit card details to purchase items, which they ultimately did not receive. Their cards also incurred unauthorised charges and recurring fees – also referred to as subscription fraud.
A spokesperson for Maison Longchamp said: “Longchamp has a zero tolerance policy and invests a fair amount of resources in combating illicit activities – such as counterfeiting or fraud using our brand – offline and online.
“For this fight to be efficient, we need to rely on active cooperation between all stakeholders, including intermediaries. We are happy that Meta takes action and demonstrates such cooperation.”
Meta has said it blocks and removes these types of ads when detected and shares the details with its partners so they can take action too.
It added: “Our latest tools use AI to help us analyse cloaking and better detect ads that redirect to harmful websites. These tools also help us more quickly reject these ads, and we can more swiftly take action when users report suspected malicious ads.”
‘Those who seek to exploit others… will be held accountable’
Meta has also issued cease and desist letters to eight former Meta Business Partners, who were offering services that breached policy.
This included phony ‘un-ban’ or account restoration services that rented access to trusted accounts, helping clients evade Meta’s enforcement systems. Meta said it will consider taking additional legal action, including litigation, if they don’t comply.
“To help combat this kind of abuse in the future and to protect the integrity of our working platforms, we’re reviewing our business partner ecosystem and are actively working on enhancing our vetting methods for approving these business partnerships,” Meta added.
The move is part of a wider battle to tackle scam ads on and off Meta’s platforms. The tech giant recently worked closely with law enforcement in the UK and Nigeria to take down a scam centre, which resulted in seven arrests.
A spokesperson for the firm said: “We’ve taken technical enforcement actions against these scammers, which includes suspending their methods of payment, disabling related accounts on our platforms, blocking the domain names for websites they used for their scams, and sharing this information with our industry partners so they can block them, too.
“Today’s lawsuits and our ongoing efforts to combat scams send a clear message: those who seek to exploit others on our platforms will be held accountable.
“[…] We continue to improve our detection and enforcement methods and have developed a multi-layered approach to combating fraud, which includes using automated, technical defenses to help protect people on our apps; disrupting criminal scam networks; and strengthening cross-industry partnerships.”
