“Social advertising is being used to defraud on a large scale across some of the biggest platforms.”: Nearly one in three meta ads allegedly point to fraud, phishing or malware

• Gen Digital found nearly a third of EU/UK meta ads linked to fraud
• Malvertising now drives 41% of cyber attacks against individuals
• Top 10 Scam Advertisers Responsible for Over Half of Fraudulent Ads Linked to China/Hong Kong Infrastructure

Ads on social networks are being misused to deliver malware and cheat people on a scale that rivals legitimate ads themselves, 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 that almost a third (30.99%) – 4.51 million ads – were related to a fraud campaign that could be either phishing, malware or other malicious infrastructure.