'Social advertising is being used to defraud at scale across some of the largest platforms.': Nearly one in three Meta ads reportedly point to a scam, phishing or malware

• Gen Digital found nearly a third of Meta ads in EU/UK linked to scams
• Malvertising now drives 41% of cyberattacks against individuals
• Top 10 scam advertisers responsible for over half of fraudulent ads, tied to China/Hong Kong infrastructure

Ads on social networks are being abused to deliver malware and scam people on a scale that rivals legitimate advertising itself., new research has claimed.

Gen Digital analyzed 14.57 million Meta ads over a 23-day period in the EU and UK representing 10.76 billion impressions, and discovered almost a third (30.99%) - 4.51 million ads - were related to a scam campaign that can be either phishing, malware, or other malicious infrastructure.

Those fraudulent ads generated 143.8 million impressions in the EU alone, and 304.11 million across the EU and UK in less than a month.

Highly concentrated scam activity

Gen Digital says the success is partly due to the fact that the ads don’t look like a scam: “Today, dangerous ads don’t look suspicious; they look professional, familiar and seem to target your exact needs. On social networks, the same optimization engines designed to maximize engagement and conversion are being repurposed to maximize victimization,” the research reads.

Another important factor is that malvertising now accounts for 41% of all cyberattacks against individuals. It is the single largest threat to consumers, according to Gen telemetry.

The (relatively) good news is that the scam activity was highly concentrated. The top 10 scam advertisers were responsible for more than half (56.1%) of all scam ads, accounting for 2.53 million unique ads and 57.92 million impressions. Researchers traced repeated campaign clusters to shared payment systems and infrastructure linked to China and Hong Kong, saying these are an organized, industrial-scale operation.

Scammers frequently reused the same domains, have near-identical ad text, and use identical infrastructure across multiple campaigns.

It seems that dopamine addiction is not the only way social media risks our wellbeing.

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