EDITORS DESK
Art Samaniego
While Facebook deleted pages that violated its community standards, the social media giant at the same time has allowed ads that lure people into giving their login credentials.
Facebook recently deactivated hundreds of pages in the Philippines to weed out the so-called violators from its platform. But Facebook has also allowed ads that apparently target Filipinos who are into cryptocurrency. These cryptocurrency-related ads target users above 39 years old, with English as a language preference, in the Philippines. When you click the ad, it would automatically open a chatbox with a user allegedly impersonating a Binance customer service personnel. Checking the profile of these people will show errors.
In October 2021, the National Telecommunications Commission of the Philippines released an order asking Facebook, Lazada, and Shopee to stop selling banned portable cell sites on their platforms. These machines could send SMS messages within five kilometers to any cellphone and can be used to send not only emergency alerts but also other messages, including misinformation. While Facebook deleted pages it says violated its community standards, it has these paid placements for a product that is only legally allowed to be owned by some government agencies or authorized private firms, but not the public.
One thing is clear too. A page can be deleted anytime by Facebook from its platform, but reports said that if you run sponsored posts, your page will be up, and your target audience will see your post.
I have tried reporting some of those pages which appeared to lure people into a scam but Facebook informed me that these ads do not violate their strict community standards.
But allowing dubious ads disregards users' safety. Facebook needs to study the dubious ads in question for the safety of account holders.
Meta, Facebook's mother company, says it has a technology that could instantly detect fake and duplicate accounts. This technology can disable a user account even before the creator activated it, and this sophisticated tech can see and stop potential scammers from using its platform.
Be warned: If you receive a message or see a sponsored post from random users or from accounts that look like it comes from legitimate companies, be careful. If the message or the sponsored post asks you to use your crypto wallet to log in, ignore it! IT'S A SCAM. Always check the URL of the page you are accessing. While the link may show a page that looks like a login page of a crypto wallet, it is a fake page that collects the login credentials of people who are naive enough to believe something without verification.
The paid or sponsored posts may come from cybercriminals who target Facebook users who are more likely to engage with them. Seeing those ads with dubious or illegal intentions on your wall is not random. You see them because cybercriminals target you. So be very careful.
The NTC needs to do something now as more illegal products like the SMS blaster appear on Facebook.
(Art H. Samaniego, Jr. is the head of Manila Bulletin IT Department and is the editor of Technews.)