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NotSanguine writes:

ProPublica is reporting on a number of ad networks posting fake/deceptive/scam ads on Meta properties.

Reporting highlights from TFA:

• Deceptive Political Ads: Eight deceptive advertising networks have placed over 160,000 election and social issues ads across more than 340 Facebook pages in English and Spanish.
• Harmed Users: Some of the people who clicked on ads were unwittingly signed up for monthly credit card charges or lost health coverage, among other consequences.
• Spotty Enforcement: Meta removed some ads after first approving them, but it failed to catch others with similar or identical content — or to stop networks from launching new pages and ads.

More from TFA:

In December, the verified Facebook page of Adam Klotz, a Fox News meteorologist, started running strange video ads.

Some featured the distinctive voice of former President Donald Trump promising "$6,400 with your name on it, no payback required" just for clicking the ad and filling out a form.

In other ads with the same offer, President Joe Biden's well-known cadence assured viewers that "this isn't a loan with strings attached."

There was no free cash. The audio was generated by AI. People who clicked were taken to a form asking for their personal information, which was sold to telemarketers who could target them for legitimate offers — or scams.
[...]
Klotz's page had been co-opted by a sprawling ad account network that has operated on Facebook for years, churning out roughly 100,000 misleading election and social issues ads despite Meta's stated commitment to crack down on harmful content, according to an investigation and analysis by ProPublica and Columbia Journalism School's Tow Center for Digital Journalism, as well as research by the Tech Transparency Project, a nonpartisan nonprofit that researches large tech platforms. The organizations combined data and shared their analyses. TTP's report was produced independently of ProPublica and Tow's investigation and was shared with ProPublica prior to publication.

The network, which uses the name Patriot Democracy on many of its ad accounts, is one of eight deceptive Meta advertising operations identified by ProPublica and Tow. These networks have collectively controlled more than 340 Facebook pages, as well as associated Instagram and Messenger accounts. Most were created by the advertising networks, with some pages masquerading as government entities. Others were verified pages of people with public roles, like Klotz, who had been hacked. The networks have placed more than 160,000 election and social issues ads on these pages in English and Spanish. Meta showed the ads to users nearly 900 million times across Facebook and Instagram.
[..]
Most of these networks are run by lead-generation companies, which gather and sell people's personal information. People who clicked on some of these ads were unwittingly signed up for monthly credit card charges, among many other schemes. Some, for example, were conned by an unscrupulous insurance agent into changing their Affordable Care Act health plans. While the agent earns a commission, the people who are scammed can lose their health insurance or face unexpected tax bills because of the switch.

The ads run by the networks employ tactics that Meta has banned, including the undisclosed use of deepfake audio and video of national political figures and promoting misleading claims about government programs to bait people into sharing personal information. Thousands of ads illegally displayed copies of state and county seals and the images of governors to trick users. "The State has recently approved that Illinois residents under the age of 89 may now qualify for up to $35,000 of Funeral Expense Insurance to cover any and all end-of-life expenses!" read one deceptive ad featuring a photo of Gov. JB Pritzker and the Illinois state seal.

There's much, much more, so please do read TFA.

What say you Soylentils? What's the solution to this sort of thing? My solution was to leave Facebook (in 2014) and never return.

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Days after Georgia Democrats warned that the state's new online portal for canceling voter registrations could be abused, officials have confirmed misuse attempts — including efforts to cancel the registrations of prominent Republicans:

On Friday (August 2), four days after Georgia Democrats began warning that bad actors could abuse the state's new online portal for canceling voter registrations, the Secretary of State's Office acknowledged to ProPublica that it had identified multiple such attempts — including unsuccessful efforts to cancel the registrations of two prominent Republicans, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

The confirmation of the attempts to misuse the portal follows separate discoveries by The Associated Press and The Current that the portal suffered at least two security glitches that briefly exposed voters' dates of birth, the last four digits of their Social Security numbers and their full driver's license numbers — the exact information needed to cancel others' voter registrations.

[...] The official X account for Georgia Senate Democrats posted that the voter registration cancellation portal "empowers conspiracy theorists and other bad actors to deny Georgians the right to vote." In response, one commenter replied with the birthdays of Republican officials, including Greene and Raffensperger, noting: "​​Lots of people have their birthday in the public domain." One user posted, "Overwhelm them with cancelled well-known Republican's registrations!"

To start the cancellation process on the portal, all users need is a voter's name, date of birth and county of residence. To finalize the cancellation request, they also must provide the last four digits of the voter's Social Security number or their full driver's license number. There's also an option to fill out a form with that information and print and send it to the voter's county election office or the Georgia Secretary of State's Office. Hassinger said that election workers would not approve any paper request that lacked a Social Security number or driver's license number.

Originally spotted on Schneier on Security.

Related:

• GOP Candidate Improperly Purged 340,000 From Georgia Voter Rolls, Investigation Claims
• Georgia Defends Voting System Despite 243-Percent Turnout in One Precinct

Original Submission

c0lo writes:

Make Bitcoin great again - what Donald Trump's backing of crypto could mean for the industry

On July 27, the former US president and Republican nominee for the upcoming election, Donald Trump, headlined the biggest Bitcoin conference of the year in Nashville. In his speech, Trump claimed he will make the US the "crypto capital of the planet and the Bitcoin superpower of the world" if returned to the White House after November's election.

Bitcoin Price Tanks Hours After Trump Floats Using it as US Reserve Asset

Bitcoin prices plummeted after former President Donald Trump suggested that the cryptocurrency could be used to pay off the country's $35 trillion national debt.

Bitcoin dropped 12 percent in the past 24 hours and ether plunged by 21 percent in the same time period. The price of bitcoin has been dropping since Friday, and briefly dropped to below $50,000 on Monday. This was the first time it had dropped below these levels since February.

In recent weeks Trump has been attempting to position himself firmly as pro-crypto. Speaking at a bitcoin conference in Nashville, Tennessee on July 27, the Republican presidential candidate unveiled his plans to make the U.S. the "crypto capital of the planet" if he is elected for a second term.

He also spoke about the U.S. creating a "strategic national bitcoin reserve."

Original Submission