The social media giant, Facebook and the tech giant Google, both are failing to take necessary actions to stop advertisement that are basically a scam. According to a study conducted by WHICH, many scam related adverts have been reported but still these two giants did not take any required step. Almost 26 percent of the people who uses Facebook and 34 percent of the Google users reported advertisement that made them a victim and still the ads were not taken down by the responsible teams.
Both of these Giants promised to take necessary actions to get rid of these fraudulent advertisement but unfortunately the reactive approach can not be found and it is better for the government that it should add the online scams as well in its Online Safety Bill. The study showed that 27% of the total people who fell victim to cyber scam through a running advertisement on any browsing engine or through any other social media platform had to experience the same situation on Facebook as well. While on the other hand almost 19% fell to this scam on Google.
While these percent of cases have been reported, almost half of such victims decided not to report the fraudulent adverts to the hosting platform. 31 percent of these victims believed that the reason for not reporting their cases was that they had a doubt that even if it gets reported, hardly any action will be taken so it could be prevented from happening again.
Adam French, a consumer rights expert gave a statement on his report and said that their latest research was able unveil potential flaws towards the reactive approach that was supposed to be taken by the two tech giant including Facebook and Google in response to getting scam related content reported. As a result, they are leaving its users and victims susceptible to falling for scams again. He further added that such online platforms should be made legally responsible to identify, to remove and to prevent such fraudulent adverts from appearing on their website. He showed his support for adding online scams in the Online Safety Bill.
Facebook also tried to clear its name and one of its spokesperson said that Facebook is not in support of fraudulent activities and the company has taken many actions against a number of pages that were reported. He added that 35000 strong team of experts works for safety and security with complicated artificial intelligence to help identify and get rid of content and they also urge the users to report any such activities. Lastly he further added that their teams take down billions of fake accounts from the platform per year and also donated 3 million to the Citizen Advice to get it delivered to the Scam Action Programme UK.
Google also came forward and stated that it is reviewing the ads, sites and the accounts constantly to make sure that they follow the policies. As a result to this surveillance their team successfully managed to block and delete up to 3.1 billion advertisement that were violating the privacy policies. Google also urged its users to help them by flagging fraudulent activities whenever they see one and also said that the procedure for doing this is also very simple. Google also said that it takes action whenever such ads are reported and the review process for such reports is manually done. They make sure that ads follow the policies and if they fail to do so , they are taken down.
Read next:Finally, Reports Show That Users Are Getting Better At Identifying and Dealing With Phishing Scams
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