Scammers pay for ads on Facebook and Instagram that promote websites pretending to be pages of the federal government, where victims are induced to pay “fees” supposedly to receive benefits, a Reuters survey revealed.
In several cases, fraudsters use chatbots, automated customer service robots, to simulate personalized service, which contributes to tricking victims, according to internet security experts.
In November and December, Reuters identified the strategy in scams that take advantage of true initiatives, such as the debt renegotiation program Desenrola and the Valores a Receber system, to retrieve money from bank accounts.
There are also frauds that invent social programs, such as the distribution of air conditioning units and Christmas dinner deliveries, or alleged government auctions of goods, such as from the Post Office.
The report found the advertisements in Meta’s ad library, which owns Facebook and Instagram. The platform is online and public.
Contacted, Meta said that the company does not allow “activities intended to deceive, defraud or exploit third parties” and that it continuously improves “technologies to combat suspicious activities”. The company did not respond to how it verifies ads and advertisers on its platforms.
The federal government told Reuters that it “monitors the circulation of information” about social programs to combat fraud and refers cases to “competent authorities”, as well as notifying platforms to remove content.
The ads often use videos of artists and journalists associated with digitally generated audios – montages in which familiar faces appear to promote the false benefits. The advertiser pages use names similar to those of news outlets or photos from image banks.
The promoted posts direct victims to websites where false assistance occurs on behalf of the federal government. Some of them simulate a conversation on WhatsApp, but they are outside the app. The fraudulent links do not have the “gov.br” termination used by the government – which has already debunked on its official website the promised benefits by scammers.
In some cases, the chatbot asks for the user’s social security number. After sending it, the chatbot responds with other personal data of the victim, such as full name and date of birth.
At the end of the process, the chatbots request that the user access a link to pay a “fee” to release the supposed benefits.
“Government launches final week of Christmas dinner kit with 90% off,” said one of the ads found by Reuters. The scammers charged a “fee” of 68.60 reais.
The “fee” for the supposed rescue of “forgotten money,” on the other hand, was 67.89 reais. “Almost every Brazilian ignores this, see how to rescue now,” said the ad.
The advertisement for the false Post Office auction promised a “lot of iPhones for 143.53 reais”. The fraudulent page offers supposed Apple phones with prices ranging from 97.39 to 289.97 reais.
Reuters sent messages via Facebook to nine pages that ran ads with these scams. No one responded.
The report also sought the companies Abmex, Perfect Pay, and Pepper, which appear as payment receivers. Abmex said by email that all suspicious or fraudulent products or services “are blocked and transactions are refunded to consumers”, and that the company only acts as an intermediary for payments. Perfect Pay and Pepper did not respond.
FINE
A survey conducted by Reclame Aqui at Reuters’ request shows that from January to November, victims resorted to the website to file 1,956 complaints of scams referring to public agencies or government programs and originating from ads on social networks.
A report from the Internet Studies and Social Networks Laboratory of the Federal University of Rio De Janeiro (NetLab UFRJ) identified that, between July and September, Meta platforms ran at least 1,817 fraudulent ads referring to Desenrola.
According to Rose Marie Santini, coordinator of Netlab, Meta’s moderation is “insufficient”, but the company is still the most transparent about ads on its social networks. Scams occur on other platforms, but there is no systematically available information on them. “It’s a black box,” she said.
In July, the Ministry of Justice notified Meta to take down misleading ads about Desenrola. Despite this, according to the ministry, the company kept the ads running for 62 days. This led the ministry to impose a daily fine of 150,000 reais against Meta in November – or 9.3 million reais in total.
The ministry informed that Meta has appealed against the fine and that the eventual collection will only be made at the end of the administrative process.
When asked, Meta did not respond to the NetLab study or the fine from the Ministry of Justice.
VULNERABLE TARGETS
According to Guilherme Alves, project manager at SaferNet Brasil, mentioning public policies is a strategy to exploit victims in vulnerable situations, and the use of chatbots brings false legitimacy to the interaction with users, as government services and private companies resort to automated conversations.
According to Alves, scammers are “very skilled in reading trends or behaviors to identify ways to communicate and deceive people”, and it is expected that this type of tool will become more accessible and efficient.
Digital law specialist Luiz Augusto D’Urso said that there is no specific regulation for chatbots in Brazil. For him, scammers commit the crime of fraud, but the Internet Civil Framework excludes social networks from responsibility for content posted by users.
However, the scenario may be different when it comes to sponsored posts since the platform is being paid to promote possibly illicit content.
“If several complaints have already been made to the platform and it still allows that criminal to use this sponsored links service, there may be, by the Judiciary, an observation of its responsibility, at first civil, but also criminal,” he said.
