Texts about protection, 11.07.2024, 13:30 PM
Sponsored content is increasingly present on social networks. Sponsored posts can often be useful because they are tailored to show up to a select online audience who are offered relevant content tailored specifically for specific people. Although personalized ads can improve your online experience, not all of them are useful or harmless. In fact, fraud originating from fake ads on social networks is on the rise dramatically, and the consequences of these frauds can be very serious.
Health is a favorite topic of cybercriminals who very often use it in their campaigns to steal information and defraud people.
These scams usually involve fake ads and websites offering cheap miracle products, drugs or treatments that promise to cure common chronic diseases and even cancer.
Bitdefender Labs researchers analyzed health scams around the world over a three-month period from March to May 2024. They noticed a significant increase in fake health ads that use AI-generated images, videos, and audio recordings, promoting various supplements on Meta’s social platforms, Facebook, Messenger and Instagram.
The page the researchers said had the most followers (more than 350,000) had more than 40 ads for medical supplements. Most of the ads were tailored to specific geographic regions. The names of celebrities, politicians, TV presenters, doctors and priests were used to attract customers.
The campaigns targeted millions of users worldwide, including Europe, North America, the Middle East, Asia and Australia.
Technological advances, including artificial intelligence, allow fraudsters to significantly increase the reach and success rate of fraud, making it harder for individuals and organizations to defend against it. The rise of deepfakes gives fraudsters using old schemes more credibility than ever before.
Artificial intelligence allows fraudsters to tailor messages and ads to the interests and vulnerabilities (health problems) of individuals. It allows scammers to generate highly persuasive messages that are both grammatically correct and in context with the ads they place through social networking platforms. Ads linked to fake videos of celebrities and well-known medical experts further increase the success of the scam.
The analyzed dip fake samples are of all possible qualities. While most videos show clear signs of fraud, Bitdefender researchers say they found many examples of videos that were harder to classify as fake.
The same technique was used for all samples, adapted to the target audience. Fraudsters use the credibility and fame of a celebrity to promote drugs for common ailments to a target group. Fake videos have been spotted in the following languages: English (targeting US, UK, Australian etc audiences), Romanian, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Russian, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Bulgarian , Polish, Greek, Croatian and others.
How dangerous this phenomenon has become is shown by the thousands of sites that promote scams with medical supplements and tens of thousands of advertisements on social networks.
The scams analyzed by Bitdefender researchers contained “catchy phrases designed to capture and manipulate emotions (and) rush people to make decisions on the spot due to limited-time offers and discounts,” the report said.
Scammers also communicate with potential victims by phone to get them to buy more products under the pretense that this is necessary for the treatment to be successful.
Most of the ads lead users to websites full of fake reviews, which the report said were likely generated by large language models.
The ads also include fictitious studies and encourage “conversations” with supposed experts to tailor treatments to each individual user.
The scale and adaptability of campaigns present a challenge for content moderation.
“If any of the sites involved are banned on any platform, fraudsters will likely have hundreds of others to replace it,” the report said. “Some pages even have thousands of likes, which points to the fact that scammers can even use stolen pages bought on the dark web, ‘rebranding’ them to vaguely resemble the topic of discussion.”
Photo: Polina Tankilevitch | Pexels
Source: www.informacija.rs
