New Which? research found that consumers continue to see misleading and potentially fraudulent investment adverts on Facebook and Instagram.

According to Which?, risky investment adverts are rife on social media, putting consumers at risk of financial and emotional harm.

Scammers are using the platform to peddle adverts that promote potentially risky investment opportunities, possibly misleading users into falling victim to fraud.

As part of the investigation, investment adverts with clear risk factors were checked, such as those that failed to include risk warnings or promised life-changing returns.

Overall, Which? found a host these adverts across both Instagram and Facebook. One collection of adverts found that was ‘particularly concerning’ was for a piece of software called Tesler, Which? said.

Twenty adverts for Tesler each raised eight serious risk flags, such as not having a risk warning and promising sensational returns.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has previously warned about a scam investment company using the brand name Tesler and impersonating a regulated trading company based in the UK.

Of the more than 1,000 adverts checked on Meta, 484 were investment related. About half were for investment products, and the rest offered investment ‘services’ such as tips, training and advice.

The most common investment product ads were property related (25%). This was followed by ads for cryptoassets such as cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (22%), both of which are unregulated.

Which? also found a small number of adverts for binary options, a form of trading banned in the UK in 2019. The FCA has previously warned that any firm offering binary options services is likely to be a scam.

Rocio Concha, Which? director of policy and advocacy, commented: “It is extremely worrying that misleading and potentially fraudulent investment adverts are still being shown to Facebook and Instagram users, putting consumers at risk of immense financial and emotional harm.

“If a consumer group and another charity can design algorithms and uncover these adverts, then tech giants should be able to create effective systems to do the same job on a bigger scale.”

Earlier this week, the Online Safety Bill was reintroduced to Parliament , but appears far from being ratified. It focuses on user-generated online forums, particularly social media platforms to ensure consumers can safely use the platform. Particular concerns are the spread of misinformation and protecting children in online spaces

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Concha added: “The government must take a crucial step in the fight against fraud by ensuring the Online Safety Bill is passed into law without further delays. Otherwise, we could be waiting even longer for alternative action to tackle online fraud infiltrating the world’s biggest search engines and social media sites.”

“The government’s Online Advertising Programme should also build on the Online Safety Bill and move from the current reactive takedown approach to one that prevents scammers entering the system in the first place. It should force online platforms and other players in the advertising ecosystem to protect consumers from fraudulent and misleading adverts.”

The Which? research demonstrated that platforms ‘could do better’ at deploying their tech to create algorithms that detect and remove harmful adverts at scale. However, platforms would still need human intervention to review a proportion of those adverts flagged based on a risk framework.

In response to the investigation, a Meta spokesperson said: “We removed a number of the ads brought to our attention for breaking our rules, many of which had already been disabled prior to being contacted by Which?.

“Promoting financial scams is against our policies and we’re dedicating significant resources to tackling this industry-wide issue on and off our platforms.

“We recently started rolling out a new process that requires financial services advertisers targeting users in the UK to be authorised by the FCA.”

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