The Libra digital currency project that Facebook recently announced has made waves all over the world. The planned cryptocurrency has already gotten the attention of the US Congress along with financial regulators across the world. The media attention surrounding the Libra cryptocurrency has given it a tremendous platform and free publicity that has already created market demand for Libra.
There are many investors who are eager to get their hands on Libra even though it hasn’t been officially launched. The demand for Libra has caused scam artists to ply their trade and sell Libra on a number of social media platforms including Facebook.
Cryptocurrency scams are a common occurrence online and it is not surprising that scammers have already started with Libra this early. Given the fact that very little is known about Libra and cryptocurrencies in general, con artists are coming up with some inventive marketing to fool people into buying Libra.
TechCrunch
The scam comes in the form of new accounts, pages, and groups that are all claiming to be official sources for Libra. These can be found on Instagram and Facebook. These pages often claim that they would sell people Libra at a discounted price through third-party websites.
The most surprising facet of this proliferation of fake Libra sites is that Facebook is not doing anything about it even though they are using the social media platform to run fake adverts and promote Libra! The social media giant seems to have been caught sleeping even as it struggles to prove to regulators that it can properly handle a global cryptocurrency.
Using Facebook To Run Facebook Scams
According to reports, all of these pages use Facebook’s official logo, a Mark Zuckerberg’s photo and even official marketing material. Some of these page links to a site called BuyLibraCoins.com. This site looks professional and slick. The site offers gives investors the opportunity to buy Libra tokens and even a chance to reserve Libra brand names. Of course, all of these Libra pages are scams!
This is not the only time that Facebook has seen a spread of cryptocurrency scams on it. However, the difference here is that the social media giant has a lot to lose from them.
This is not the first time that Facebook is being used as a platform to promote digital currency scams. However, this time around the social media giant has a lot to lose since the scam artists are linking themselves to a Facebook product directly.
