Australia Will Now Take Down Social Media Ads Promoting Investment Scams

The Australian financial market regulator can now remove social media advertisements that promote shady financial schemes to dupe investors. Announced today (Thursday), the new capability comes in addition to the regulator’s power to take down fraudulent websites.

Over 14,000 Websites Blocked

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) further revealed that it took down over 14,000 investment scam and phishing websites in the last two years, removing them at an average pace of 130 malicious sites every week.

However, the regulator has not yet said whether it has taken down any social media ad campaigns promoting scams.

“Expanding our investment scam takedown capability to social media ads will help safeguard Australian consumers,” said ASIC Deputy Chair Sarah Court, explaining that it would stop scammers from directing consumers to online investment scam sites.

“ASIC’s traditional toolkit – investigations, court actions, administrative actions – is important, but it cannot combat the scourge of online scams on its own. The takedown capability is one example of how we are monitoring the latest trends and acting to protect Australians from those who try to steal from them.”

Explaining the types of scams, ASIC said that the websites it took down in the last six months promoted fake AI-based trading bots, fake corporate documents and fake chatbots. These websites even embedded legitimate-looking third-party content such as live trading charts and chatbots to make their fake sites seem credible.

The now-blocked websites even displayed fake news pages with AI-generated celebrity images and fake profiles of prominent Australians to collect contact information and pitch their scams.

Regulators’ Fight Against Rampant Scams

ASIC, which oversees the country's retail financial sector, implemented a “scam website takedown capability” in 2023. Under this capability, it takes down suspicious websites. It focuses on three types of websites: fake investment platforms, crypto-asset scam websites, and imposter scam websites. All of these are very difficult to detect unless victims come forward.

However, its new capability to take down social media ads promoting investment scams is not the first for a regulator. Italy’s Consob, which also has the power to block access to fraudulent sites, gained the authority to take down social media campaigns last year.

Read more: Italy’s Consob and Google Partner to Block Fraudulent Investment Ads

Most other regulators, however, including those in the United Kingdom, Cyprus, and Spain, only issue warnings against fraudulent platforms without taking any further action against them.

Meanwhile, the pan-European regulator issued a letter to multiple social media and digital platforms, including X, Meta, TikTok, Alphabet, Telegram, Google, and others, earlier this year, urging them to take active measures to prevent the promotion of unauthorised financial services.