The reactive approach taken by the world’s biggest online platforms to tackle fraudulent adverts allows harmful scams to slip through the net, Which? research suggests.
43% of scam victims conned by an advert they saw online, via a search engine or social media ad, said they didn’t report the scam to the platform hosting it, according to a Which? survey.
Worryingly, 51% of 1,870 search engine users we surveyed said they didn’t even know how to report dodgy ads that appear in their search listings.
And 35% of 1,630 social media users said they didn’t know how to report a suspicious advert they’d seen on social media.