Page 24 - ARUBA TODAY

A24 TECHNOLOGY
Friday 5 april 2019

Scammers peddling bogus tax breaks find traction on Facebook

By AMANDA SEITZ and MAE story home in Mount Tabor, used by a company once
ANDERSON New Jersey, 37-year-old under investigation by the
Associated Press Chris Fitzpatrick saw the Federal Trade Commission,
Hundreds of ads on Face- ad last year claiming he the government’s consum-
book promised U.S. hom- might qualify for “free” so- er protection agency. In
eowners that they were lar panels because Gov. 2012, the FTC sued Jason
eligible for huge state tax Phil Murphy planned to re- Akatiff and his company
breaks if they installed new lease “$100 million solar in- — then called Coleadium,
solar-energy panels. There centives.” He was skeptical also known as Ads 4 Dough
was just one catch: None because none of the solar — for running fake news
of it was true. companies he worked with websites that marketed
The scam ads used photos mentioned such incentives, unfounded health benefits
of nearly every U.S. gover- but worried others might of colon cleanse and acai
nor — and sometimes Presi- not be. berry products, according
dent Donald Trump — to “It’s very frustrating be- to court records.
claim that with new, lucra- cause it preys upon inno- Akatiff settled the allega-
tive tax incentives, peo- cent people,” Fitzpatrick tions without admitting guilt
ple might actually make said. and agreed to a $1 million
money by installing solar The Associated Press found fine. Akatiff changed his
technology on their homes. that some of these ads company’s name to A4D
Facebook users only need- directed people to solar- Inc. in 2015, according to
ed to enter their addresses, energy websites that listed California business filings.
email, utility information the same business address Akatiff did not respond to
and phone number to find — a mailbox in Carlsbad, messages left with his Cali-
out more. California — that had been fornia business.q
Those incentives don’t ex- In this screenshot made from a Facebook page, a search result
ist. for “solar energy governor” in Facebook’s Ad Archive shows Researchers find more cases of
While the ads didn’t aim ads that were falsely promising social media users that they
to bilk people of money could “get paid to go solar.” Facebook app data exposure
directly — and it wasn’t Associated Press
possible to buy solar panels transparent about the ads no place on Facebook,”
through these ads — they that run on their platforms. company spokeswoman
led to websites that har- Last year, Facebook Devon Kearns said in a
vested personal informa- launched a searchable statement.
tion that could be used database that provides “We removed these pages
to expose respondents details on political ads it and disabled these ad ac-
to future come-ons, both runs, including who bought counts recently and will
scammy and legitimate. them and the age and continue to take action.”
It’s not clear that the data gender of the audience. Facebook says it uses an
was actually used in such a But it didn’t make that in- automated process to re-
manner. formation available for view the images, text, tar-
Facebook apparently other ads until Thursday, geting and position of ads
didn’t take action until no- when it announced it was posted to its site. In some
tified by state-government expanding the database cases, employees review In this Aug. 21, 2018, file photo, a Facebook start page is shown
officials who noticed the to include all active ads. the ads. Users can also give on a smartphone in Surfside, Fla.
ads. Twitter offers its own data- feedback if they believe Associated Press
The fictitious notices reveal base of ads and promoted the ads violate company SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Se- The databases were from a
how easily scammers can tweets. policies. curity researchers have un- Mexico-based media com-
pelt internet users with mis- Google has an archive for Governors’ offices were covered more instances of pany called Cultura Colec-
information for months, un- political ads only. alarmed to see photos of Facebook user data being tiva, which included more
detected. The partial approaches al- top politicians featured publicly exposed on the in- than 540 million records
They also raise further ques- low misleading ads to fes- alongside claims such as ternet, further underscoring — like user comments and
tions about whether big ter. One problem is the fact “you can get paid to go its struggles as it deals with likes — and from an app
tech companies such as that ads can be targeted solar.” a slew of privacy and other called At the Pool. The re-
Facebook are capable of so narrowly that journalists Helen Kalla, a spokeswom- problems. searchers said passwords
policing misleading ads, and watchdog groups of- an for Nevada Gov. Steve The researchers from the stored for At the Pool were
especially as the 2020 elec- ten won’t see them. Sisolak, said she notified firm UpGuard said in a blog “presumably” for the app
tions — and the prospect “That allows people to do Facebook last month after post Wednesday that the and not for Facebook. Still,
of another onslaught of on- more dirty tricks,” said Ian staffers saw them. data, which included user storing them publicly could
line misinformation — loom. Vanderwalker, senior coun- Facebook took them down names and passwords, put people at risk if they
“This is definitely concern- sel at the Brennan Center days later, although some came from two different used the same passwords
ing — definitely, it’s misin- for Justice’s Democracy continued to re-appear Facebook apps that stored across different accounts.
formation,” said Young Mie Program. days after that complaint. their data publicly on Ama- While the At the Pool data
Kim, a University of Wiscon- In mid-March, some web- Facebook also yanked ads zon’s cloud services. Face- collection was not as large
sin-Madison professor who sites linked in the fake solar- featuring images of gover- book said the databases as that for Cultura Colecti-
studied 5 million Facebook energy ads disappeared. nors in Texas, Illinois, Colora- have been taken down. va, UpGuard said it includ-
ads during the 2016 elec- After complaints from gov- do, Arizona, South Carolina But the episode illustrates ed plain text passwords for
tions. “I keep telling people: ernors’ offices, Facebook and other states. But the Facebook’s issues with 22,000 users. The app itself
We don’t have any basis to inactivated nearly all of the ads had already been run- controlling its users’ data, shut down in 2014, and Up-
regulate such a thing.” ads and several pages af- ning for some time. especially once it is in the Guard said it is not known
Experts say websites and filiated with them. After researching solar- hands of third-party devel- how long the user details
apps need to be more “These scammy ads have panel options for his two- opers. were exposed. q