Scandal: Fraudulent advertising on Facebook

In reality it is a scandal! Facebook allows dubious advertisements that end up paying you an advance. Rip-off from start to finish.

Facebook repeatedly blocks and bans users, often for inexplicable reasons, repeatedly refers to its community standards and often ends up leaving its users out in the cold. When it comes to finding out why you are actually blocked, there is no answer. Often they are simply links to other websites. But not on dubious websites with any short URL, but on established media sites. But often it's also because you upload a photo that Facebook simply doesn't fit into. What we want to say is: Facebook keeps blocking and blocking the wrong people.

But if you report obvious fraud, be it fake competitions, false claims, photos that have been taken out of context, then in many cases nothing happens. Because Facebook deletes only very sparsely here. The only feedback you will get is that it will not be deleted. Apparently there is no violation of Facebook's community standards.

Somehow an upside down world!

By the way, we only felt this upside down world ourselves a few days ago. What happened? We reported on a fake photo and a rumor. So a typical article. In it we described that it was fake. So a fact check, like one of thousands, as you have known from us for over 10 years. It was this article: “ US police chased non-existent Antifa buses ”

We shared this fact check on our Facebook pages and in our Facebook story.

And what does Facebook do or what does a Facebook fact checker do?

Facebook WARNED US!

“According to independent fact-checkers at PolitiFact, a mimikama post is false information. In order to stop the spread of false reports, we have added a corresponding note to the post.”

Battle of the fact checkers – or what?

It's just like that, we're not official Facebook fact checkers! And there are reasons for that too. However, our article was checked by the English-language website PolitiFact. We wrote to the fact checkers at PolitFact on the same day (August 26, 2021) and raised an objection. According to Facebook itself, they now have 48 hours to react. Not only did we object, we also clarified who we are, what we do and how long we have been around. 24 hours, 48 ​​hours, 3, 4, 5, 6 days passed, and on the evening of the 7th day , September 2nd, 2021, we received this email:

“Thank you for emailing PolitiFact. I apologize for the delay in responding to your appeal. We have removed the fact-check rating from your url as it was clearly applied in error. Please let me know if you have any further issues with this post.”

Means something like:

“Thank you for your email to PolitiFact. I apologize for the delay in responding to your complaint. We have removed the fact check rating from your URL because it was clearly assigned in error. Please let me know if you have any further issues with this post”

To put it bluntly: A foreign-language fact checker mistakenly rated our content as FAKE and got ourselves into a lot of trouble! We're seriously considering whether we should offer the fact-checkers at Politifact a workshop. Because of background and content analysis and stuff. But that's another topic.

In other words: the official fact checkers were wrong. The question is also: Why are foreign-language fact checkers allowed to rate and mark content whose language they apparently do not speak? Where are the DPA or the Correctiv at this point?

And what happened to us is what happens to many users. The impression is that Facebook punishes the wrong people very often and more and more often, and in our eyes that is actually a scandal!

Scandal? There was something else...

We have known such sentences, such content, such messages, such status posts on Facebook for many years. (sic!)

“My name is Petra Schumann of German origin. I have a serious illness that causes some deaths and liver cancer and I have a sum of 298,000 euros. I would like to donate this amount to someone who is really interested and serious. Do not take this post lightly as it is a very important topic. I lost my husband 6 years ago. I was very worried and couldn't get married, we didn't have children. I would like to make this donation before my death because the days are numbered because of this patient. I am very worried and very depressed. Would you like to benefit from this donation? .Thanks for your understanding."

You certainly know – right?

Such messages or status posts, which are often made somewhere as a comment on fake profiles, are a so-called advance fee fraud. We ourselves have been warning about this nasty scam for years.

What happens if you accept such an offer?

If you contact the person, you will quickly receive an official document during the conversation. The appearance of these documents varies greatly, but they all contain one common point: You should pay!

In order to get the money, you have to contact a supposed lawyer who will send you a pseudo-document. This then states that you should transfer a certain amount of several hundred euros to an account (usually abroad) as security or administration costs.

But this is so-called advance fee fraud : after the transfer, you will never hear from that lawyer or the seriously ill woman again. The profiles disappear from Facebook again, the email addresses are usually deleted, the money is gone.

And why is this a scandal if we already know this?

The scandal is: Facebook allows such FRAUDULANS to place ADVERTISING on Facebook. This is a “SPONSORED POST” that every Facebook user gets played in their stream. Whether you want that or not. So Facebook allows its users to become VICTIMS of this NASTY FRAUD.

This is currently the advert where Facebook gets money for it. This can be recognized, among other things, by the fact that Facebook itself marks this with “Sponsored”.  

The ad is created by the Facebook page “Financial Support – Donation”

The advertisement and the Facebook page in detail. The fact check

The Facebook page and the advertisement were created on September 2nd, 2021. This was booked by the fraudsters for Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, as you can see in this screenshot (taken on September 3rd, 2021 at 9:47 a.m.).

The scammers' associated Facebook page:

The so-called page transparency of the page. Here you can see that the page was created on September 2, 2021.

A few words about the profile photo. This was stolen from the internet by fraudsters. This is not the “Petra Schumann” mentioned above, but this photo can be found in countless stock photo image databases, such as “Shutterstock.com”. According to this image database, the creator is: “Photographee.eu” ( reference to Shutterstock ). If you search for the profile picture using Google's image search, you will see a lot of results with this photo and you can immediately see that it is an advertising photo.

What happens if you contact Ms. Schumann on Facebook?

If you send Ms. Schumann a message on Facebook, you will receive a prompt reply! Attached is a screenshot of the chat history.

Please don't be surprised if it sounds a bit dubious on our part and may have included well-known song lyrics. The reason for this action was to see whether the chat partner actually understood what we were writing.

At this point the chat ended. Since we know this scam from other fraud attempts that we have been reporting on for years, we know what it ends up with. The fraudsters demand personal information from the fraud victim so that they can make and pay out their donation! This includes not only the name and address, but also the email address, date of birth and bank details.

Contracts for such scams look similar to the examples below and can be written in any language imaginable:

To get the money, you should contact a lawyer (who of course isn't one). They will then send you a pseudo-document (see above). This will tell you that you should transfer a certain amount of several hundred euros to an account (usually abroad) as security or administration costs or a transaction fee. So you must FIRST PAY AN ADVANCE TO COVER the alleged SECURITY or ADMINISTRATION COSTS or a TRANSACTION FEE!

The “donation” can only be paid out once you have made this transfer. Hence the name “ADVANCE SCAM”. However, you never get the promised donation because this is the core of “advance fee fraud”.

The pattern is always the same in such fraudulent crimes:

These messages vary, but are always the same in various ways:

• A mostly very religious person.
• Terminally ill, the tumors vary.
• Only a few days to weeks left to live.
• A large amount is given away.
• Contact only possible via the “lawyer”.

Of course we reported the page on Facebook!

We are now curious to see how long Facebook will need to respond to this. We will publish the result here.

Conclusion:

It is a scandal that Facebook bans and blocks its users who are up to no harm for no reason. It is also questionable why the in-house fact checkers can afford to make mistakes with fatal consequences and take a long time to correct them. We are also speechless that Facebook allows paid advertising by fraudsters on its platform. Literally a blind person would have heard the fraud from a distance. This is where unsuspecting users can fall into a nasty advance payment scam. The site mentioned has now been online for over 24 hours. Users who have fallen into this trap are welcome to contact us and share their experience with us. (to the reporting form )