Fraudulent activities on social media platforms such as Facebook have become more and more common and appealing to scammers all over the world. Recently, a handful of verified Facebook pages were hacked and began running ads that were likely linked to malware. Not only were these fake accounts impersonating Facebook and stealing user’s data, but they were even managing to purchase ads from Meta.
Social media consultant, Matt Navarra, was the first to spot the ads and publicized them online. These malicious accounts were very believable, with names like “Meta Ads” and “Meta Ads Manager”. These fortunately-now-disabled accounts likely reached a much larger audience than the few thousand followers they had, thanks to the ads purchased via Meta.
Another example of these imitation accounts was “Google AI” where victims were tricked into downloading fake tools from an AI chatbot from Google. The verified account had belonged to Indian celebrity singer, Miss Pooja, up until April 29th, and had an impressive 7 million followers by then.
Facebook keeps a history of account name changes, allowing us to spot any suspicious activity that happens on the platform. Although this is a useful security measure, it clearly was not enough in the case of these robber accounts was still able to purchase ads from Meta.
Apart from the recently-impersonated accounts from the likes of Google, there is a trend of fake chatbot AI malware scams affecting users of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp that Meta recently exposed. Probably linked to this phenomenon, hackers have created numerous malicious pages and have been targeting businesses with access to Facebook ad accounts. The so-called “DuckTail” malware is known to steal sensitive information, including browser cookies and two-factor authentication codes, thus leaving businesses in a very vulnerable position.
The effects of the breach of these fraudulent accounts created a stir online and have since been disabled. Despite this, Meta faces a problem that could have been avoided or at least minimized had the ads services been more fastidious with what goes out of its platform. To prevent this from happening again, Meta launched its new verification system, Meta Verified, to protect at least its business accounts with more confidence. However, this service comes with a fee attached that many businesses will be forced to pay if they wish to use to avoid more drama.
