We have uncovered a network of domains and Facebook pages that have shared nearly 3,000 dubious ads during a year. The ads predominantly promote erectile dysfunction treatments and questionable cryptocurrency platforms. Despite being flagged by Meta for policy violations, they have reached nearly 6 Million Facebook users all over Europe.
It is not simple to think of what cryptocurrency platforms and erectile dysfunction (ED) treatments might have in common. Even if something popped into your mind, we are sure you didn't think of THE DOMAIN. As we didn’t get rich during our recent research in Montenegro about the social media scams for “money-making” cryptocurrency apps, we have proceeded with our jobs and found out that three domains which were used in Montenegro to host dubious cryptocurrency platforms in other EU countries were used to advertise ED medications.
This is just a fragment of 70 domains we have found hosting ads for different products, predominantly but not exclusively, erectile dysfunction medication. Nearly 3,000 ads have been shared within a year.
The ads are placed on Facebook pages and shared as sponsored posts—usually featuring a link to where the ad is supposed to be (at this time, all of them are inaccessible) and a photo; rarely, a boosted post is in a video format. Another red flag that something is wrong with the content is that out of approximately 3,000 ads, Meta has removed a little over 2,000 because either the ad's content or the page that shared the ad didn't follow the Advertising Policy. Still, from September 2023 to September 2024, the ads reached nearly 6 Million Facebook users across Europe.
ABCDE FRAMEWORK
The ABCDE is designed to help organize reports and conduct analysis and assessment clearly and logically. It breaks down disinformation incidents into five key elements: Actor, Behavior, Content, Degree and Effect.
A - ACTOR
At this point, we have several research studies to back the following claim - the higher the promises in the ads, the higher the chances of producers and distributors disappearing without a trace. According to their role in this scam, three potential groups of actors can be identified - producers/distributors, the domains’ network, and the Facebook pages that sponsored posts. The individuals behind them and their potential mutual connection remain unidentified.None of the 70 domains and almost all 3,000 URLs of the ads the same domains hosted are “reachable” at this point. In cases when the links are still active, they redirect to content unrelated to the ad - such as WhatsApp cryptocurrency groups or something that appears to be a Chinese video game website.
Publicly available data about the domains’ registration provided no additional insights about the network behind this - none have available data about the registrant, and those that do are registered via the company Domains By Proxy, LLC. Although there are legitimate reasons to conceal the identity of a domain registrar, such as privacy or safety, it is also obvious how this can be favorable for scammers.
Out of the 246 Facebook pages we identified as sharing dubious content, 29 have since been removed. Of the remaining pages, 114 provide data on the locations of their administrators. Each page may have multiple administrators based in various countries: 105 have administrators in Lithuania, 88 in the USA, and 42 in Ukraine.
B - BEHAVIOR
Most ads are boosted for a day or a few days and on different pages, making it harder to track this content. The graph shows the dynamics of boosted content in this network, or how many ads have been released within a day. The last summer season and the beginning of the year had notably slower dynamics. Apparently, even scammers take a vacation.
C - CONTENT
The content usually features a visual and a link that is (or was, as they are no longer active) supposed to take you to the ad and rarely videos which seem to be voiceover done by AI tool.The visuals are simple, often vulgar or tasteless, and in few cases featuring even pornographic content or known adult movie stars. We have found the ads for 18 products in total. The majority of them, seem to be erectile dysfunction medication - 12 in total (Alfa Beast; Alfa Zone; Big Size; Bull Run; Erectil; Erexol; Potencialex; Rhino Gold; Thunder of Zeus; Uromexil; Viarex; Wirex) and three seem to be weight loss drugs (Lipofix; Redusizer; Reduslim). Out of the remaining three, two seem to be products based on cannabinoids, and one is some sort of joint medication.
D - DEGREE
Although two-thirds of the ads have been removed by Facebook for breaching their advertising policy, the content still reached almost 6 Million platform users all over Europe. The ads have targeted: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canary Islands, Ceuta, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, French Guiana, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Madeira, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain.
E - EFFECT
According to the amount of content dedicated to ED treatments and cryptocurrency apps, one would naturally expect a lot of rich men with healthy prostates.
However, being witty about this will not help anyone. Out of the 6 million Meta users across Europe who viewed nearly 3,000 ads - which we have reasonable doubts might all contain some degree of falsehood - we can only guess how many were scammed and in what ways. A modest consolation is that we found no evidence of the medication being harmful, although, admittedly, we did not investigate this aspect specifically. There’s always the possibility that the drugs are indeed unique, which makes it even more disappointing that no legitimate links are available for further research.
CONCLUSION
This research, like many previous studies on different types of scams, highlights the need to shift perceptions of both scammers and victims. There is often a tendency to blame scam victims more than the scammers who deceive them.
Online scams have become so elaborate that anyone without a solid level of digital literacy could fall for them. A recent report by Croatian fact-checking organisation Faktograf.hr has shown that at this point, another scam is set up to allegedly help the people who have been scammed.
It is worth noting that Facebook, ie Meta, the company that owns it, implemented its restrictions on most of the content however, it still reached almost 6 Million people making it obvious that the band-aid will not help with an open-heart surgery.
Digital literacy is an essential skill and should be perceived as such. Individual efforts to protect yourself from scams are a first step. The second is to seek proper medical help as it truly is not a big deal and it can happen to anyone.