ASIC extends scam enforcement capability to social | Australian Markets

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has upped the ante in its combat towards investment scams, with its web site takedown capability now expanded to cowl social media adverts.

This comes as the company watchdog’s latest enforcement and regulatory replace for the final six months confirmed over 14,000 investment scam and phishing web sites have been eliminated because the introduction of its “takedown capability” two years in the past, with an average of 130 “malicious” websites taken down each week.

“Expanding our investment scam takedown capability to social media ads will help safeguard Australian consumers,” ASIC Deputy Chair, Sarah Court, mentioned.

“ASIC is shutting down round 130 of these investment scam web sites each week which suggests we’re shutting down pathways to attain Australians. ASIC’s conventional toolkit – investigations, court docket actions, administrative actions – are important, however they’ll’t fight the scourge of online scams on their own.

“The takedown capability is one instance of how we’re monitoring the latest trends and performing to defend Australians from those that attempt to steal from them.

“While the latest data shows the coordinated work of the National Anti-Scam Centre is making progress in the fight against scams, there is still more work to do, and we urge Australians to stay vigilant.”

ASIC’s replace additionally highlighted the highest 5 methods utilized by online investment scam perpetrators to lure customers, together with:

• AI washing: Scammers declare their pretend trading bots use AI to generate passive income and unachievable returns.
• Scam web site templates: Scammers use slick templates, pretend company paperwork and chatbot plugins to launch convincing copy-cat scam web sites shortly.
• Taking benefit of third events: Scammers embed legitimate-looking third-party content material like dwell trading charts and chatbots to make their pretend websites appear credible.
• Fake news articles: Scammers create pretend news pages with AI-generated movie star and outstanding Australians fakes to accumulate contact data and pitch their scams.
• Cloaking: Scammers change the content material displayed on the web site relying on the placement of the target market and machine kind.

According to the National Anti-Scam Centre, investment scams have impacted Australians probably the most in relation to financial hurt, with $945 million misplaced to these scams in 2024.