Wednesday, 5 February 2025
Celebrities cannot stop their brandjacking, since many authorities are unable to help!
Since 2019, The Noakes Foundation has supported research into the brandjacking of influential celebrities' reputations on social media, and other poorly moderated platforms. The Fake Celebrity Endorsement (FCE) research team is documenting how this digital crime is an inscrutable, traumatic experience for celebrities, their representatives, and the financial victims who report being conned by fake endorsements. In addition to being traumatised by being featured in fake adverts, microcelebrities are further traumatised by the many reports from fans of their upset at being conned. A few celebrities have become targets for recurring cybervictimisation with no recourse, resulting in repeat trauma.
The FCE distinguishes 'digital crimes' from 'cybercrimes': Micro-fraudsters typically target private individuals with limited access to resources for combating digital crime. This contrasts to cybercrimes in which corporations are attacked (Olson, 2024). They are often well positioned to support their employees with costly resources that private individuals cannot afford. Research into the latter is well-resourced, as is interventions to stop it. By contrast, the fighting of digital crimes that impact private citizens are poorly resourced, particularly in the Global South. In the case of fake celebrity endorsements, press reports of this scam suggest that the problem grows each year- eleven South African celebrities fell victim to it in 2024, up from two in the first reports of 2014.
Fake celebrity endorsement is a digital crime that may require many authorities in society to combat it. Below is a list of the roleplayers that might potentially help prevent digital crimes:
Figure 1 shows a simplified process of the fake endorsement phishing scam. The authors of this digital crime are unknown- they can range from gangs, to the invisible threat of AI and bot armies, to even military intelligence agencies raising funds. Not only do these cybercriminals exploit scamming ecosystems inside popular social media platforms, they also exploit related ecosystems on platforms such as Huione Guarantee (now "Haowang Guarantee"), a Cambodian conglomerate. It offers a messaging app, stable coin, and crypto exchange, and has facilitated $2 billion in transactions. Such platforms are integral to the industrialisation and scaling-up of online scams, for example through supporting the outsourcing of scammers' money-laundering activities (The Economist, 2025).
1) Celebrity influencers
2) Financial victims
Fans who have developed a parasocial relationship with a particular celebrity they follow, may genuinely believe that the fake endorsement adverts are a legitimate offer. Notwithstanding, the product’s promise seeming to be too good to be true. Having been conned, its victims may be ashamed, or in denial. Many may consider their financial loss not worth reporting (as a micro-fraud versus a serious crime). Even if victims are willing to report the digital crime, it may not be obvious which authority the crime is best reported to.3) Social media advertising services
4) Poorly-moderated content hosts
5) Banks
As the financial victims legitimately authorise payments off their own accounts, victims do no enjoy recourse via their banks. To avoid new transactions from scammers, these victims often have to pay banks for new cards after terminating their old ones. It is unclear what role banks could adopt in combating digital crimes, wherein clients are defrauded whilst following a seemingly legitimate payment process.
6) Cyber defence companies
7) Cybercrime reporters and statistics gatherers
8) Cybercrime researchers, and educators, in companies
In a similar collaborative vein, cybercrime researchers and educators in companies are working together to help combat digital crimes targeting their employees and clients. In particular, banks and insurance companies in SA are pro-actively raising awareness around phishing and other common digital crimes. This is done in communications that range from email newsletters, to pop-up warnings that clients must acknowledge reading post log-in.
9) Anti-crime activists (PBOs and NGOs)
Anti-digital crime education tends to focus on educating high school students and working professionals with preventative knowledge in English. However, our research into fake celebrity endorsement victims' online commentary suggest that most are over fifty five, with English being their second language, at best. In response, The Noakes Foundation has supported the development of modules in English for educating silver surfers on the most common digital crimes. Ideally, though, these modules (and reportfakeendorsement.com's content) should be available in South Africa's 11 official languages.
10) Social media platforms and their Big Tech owners
Social media companies, and their Big Tech owners, would seem to have a particular responsibility for protecting users from digital crime threats on their platforms. In contrast, there is a decade-long history in SA of even influential celebrities not being well-supported via speedy responses to their brandjacking, and scam adverts are seldom taken down based on celebrities', their representatives' and other victims' reports.
The most popular platform for this scam in SA is Meta's Facebook and Instagram. Meta does not understand the content that its users share (Horwitz, 2023). Further, it does not report on scam ecosystems based inside its own platforms. Consequently, neither Facebook nor Instagram can pro-actively identify digital crimes, let alone quickly adapt their systems to stop emergent threats from micro-fraudsters. It's left up to whistleblowers, former employees, investigative journalists and researchers to create awareness on these platforms' serious flaws, such as it being used as a scammers' ecosystem tied to scam-as-service ones. This would seems at odds with corporate responsibility- Meta should publicly report regarding its progress in tackling scam-ecosystems on its FB, WhatsApp and Instagram platforms. It could also pro-actively warn vulnerable users, such as the aged, against the latest scam risks.
In a sense, digital crimes by cybercriminals on social networks can be considered a parasitic attack within a larger parasitic host: Meta’s Facebook and Instagram are infomediaries that misrepresent themselves as symbionts in supporting users’ communal connections online. In reality, Meta’s business model is parasitic in relying on 3 000 000 000 users to share content (Robbins, 2018). Much of this content is not the work of original/creative producers, but rather sampled from content that's proved popular on other platforms. In essence, social media platforms are middlemen between content creators and their audiences, taking most of the profits from advertising. These platforms also take the intellectual property of online content creators. In the Global South this serves as a form of neocolonial data extraction as Big Tech multinationals from the Global North extract its data, with little being reciprocated. For example, while powerful celebrities in the US can enjoy access to dedicated Facebook support, there is no equivalent offering for influential SA users. Instead, they are lucky to stumble onto internal staff or Trusted Partners who can best help them respond to the Facebookjacking or Instajacking crimes.
In contrast to the usefulness of human insiders, reports to Meta's AI that manages users' reports of dubious accounts and content is simply not capable of recognising malicious advertisers' accounts; At face value, there is in nothing “wrong” with how the scammers’ accounts are set up - They have have a human profile (fake name) managing a business profile (fake name and business). Reporting the scam accounts is useless, since the fraudsters fill-in all the right criteria to fly under the radar! The scammers use 'Like Farms' and a network of fake profiles to all create a sense of legitimacy through 'liking, sharing and commenting' on posts and ads. The criminals also use a “legitimate website” - this is a bought domain and hosing and (questionable design) - selling a “product” and accumulating data of visitors' info and credit card details. All this seems to be legitimate business behaviour to AI, but is malicious and AI cannot detect that. Scammers use a (stolen) credit card, or hijacked meta Ads manager profile and run advertIf this content had truly been verified by a human it would have been taken down immediately. Even to the most untrained eye it was obvious that this content was a deep fake.s through their “business page”. This works for a short while until the card or the account are stopped, and then they just create another one. These ADs are selling a product online, the product is seemly harmless and well within the legal parameters of Meta's Community standards. The fact that its a fake product is immaterial to Meta, the onus in on the customer to know when they are being scammed, and if users try to report this to be a harmful product, it doesn’t work” as that is deemed a matter of personal opinion! Where such content is checked by a human moderators, the content is so obviously fake that they taken it down quickly.
It appears that Meta's Facebook and Instagram are turning a blind eye to this digital advertising crime. The benefit to META is clear with them reaping the rewards through advertisers' spending: Trustfull's 2024 report expects Deep Fake Fraud to reach $ 15.7 billion in 2024. Meta is set to take a large chunk of that ad-spend revenue in distributing fake, malicious content. It’s hard not to draw to the conclusion that it seems irrelevant to META if the content is genuine or a scam, or if the account used to promote these scams has been hacked or cloned. Either way, META and Facebook still profits.
8) Cybercrime researchers, and educators, in companies
9) Anti-crime activists (PBOs and NGOs)
10) Social media platforms and their Big Tech owners
11) Financial investors
12) Government politicians
13) Local police
14) International law enforcement
15) Local law
16) Higher Education and research funders
17) Product regulators
Celebrity, you are on your own in responding to digital crime?!
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Acknowledgements
Thursday, 29 August 2024
After half-a-million views, "Dr Noakes" erection dysfunction "advert" taken down by Facebook + suggested actions for META to do better
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Figure 1. Screenshot from the fake 'Dr Noakes' erection dysfunction advert on Facebook (2024) |
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Figure 2. Screenshot of scammers' Facebook account featuring "Dr Tim Noakes" erection pill adverts (2024) |
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Figure 3. Scammer account location behind fake Facebook Dr Tim Noakes adverts (2024) |
Our initial Facebook advert lookup revealed that one page was running four adverts (Figure 2). This account ("Tristan") was managed from Nepal and India (Figure 3).
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Figure 4. Screenshot of fake Tristan account header behind Dr Tim Noakes adverts on Facebook (2024) |
This fake account page also leveraged fake interactions to suggest that it was liked, and followed (Figures 4 and 5).
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Figure 6. Screenshot of scammers' "Hughles" Facebook account (2024) |
The scammers flick-flacked between varied accounts in committing this cybercrime- they initially used "Hughles" (Figures 6 and 7), "Cameron Sullivan Setting", and "Murthyrius" in launching the same deepfake ads. By the 28th of July, 13 of these "adverts were taken down by Facebook, but the scammers shifted to new accounts, "Longjiaren.com" (Figure 8) and "Brentlinger" (renamed "Brentlingerkk" after we reported it). On the 29th of August, these accounts and their adverts were disabled by Facebook.
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Figure 8. Screenshot of Longjiaren.com scammers Facebook account for fake adverts (2024) |
Such adverts typically reach viewers outside The Noakes Foundation, Nutrition Network and Eat Better South Africa’s networks. Their audiences know Professor Noakes does not endorse miracle weight loss and other cures. To reach vulnerable publics, The Noakes Foundation has run Facebook alerts to warn about this latest cybercrime. Ironically, the most recent advert attempting to flag the "Dr Noakes" scam was blocked by Facebook advertising (Figure 9)!
Actions for META to do better in fighting cybercrime on its platforms
2) Create a compliance team that is dedicated to thwarting cybercriminals' activities;
3) Offer at least one human contact on each META platform for serious reports of criminal misuse;
4) Promote frequent reporters of cybercrime by referring them to META's Trusted Partners or Business Partners for rapid aid;
5) Encourage external research on every platform regarding cybercriminals' activities (such initiatives could develop inexpensive tools. For example, for celebrities' reps to protect public figures from being deep faked in "adverts");
6) Provide more feedback on what was influential in reporting cybercrime for accounts and content to be removed. Without such feedback, fraud reporters may not be sure which reports are most effective;
7) Have a recommendation system in place for support networks that cybervictims can approach (such as referring South Africans to its national CyberSecurity hub).