- Nepali becomes youngest to climb world's 8,000m peaks
- Climate change made deadly Hurricane Helene more intense: study
- A US climate scientist sees hurricane Helene's devastation firsthand
- Padres edge Dodgers, Mets on the brink
- Can carbon credits help close coal plants?
- With EU funding, Tunisian farmer revives parched village
- Sega ninja game 'Shinobi' gets movie treatment
- Boeing suspends negotiations with striking workers
- 7-Eleven owner's shares spike on report of new buyout offer
- Your 'local everything': what 7-Eleven buyout battle means for Japan
- Three million UK children living below poverty line: study
- China's Jia brings film spanning love, change over decades to Busan
- Paying out disaster relief before climate catastrophe strikes
- Chinese shares drop on stimulus upset, Asia tracks Wall St higher
- SE Asian summit seeks progress on Myanmar civil war
- How climate funds helped Peru's women beekeepers stay afloat
- Nobel Peace Prize to be awarded as wars rage
- Pacific island nations swamped by global drug trade
- AI-aided research, new materials eyed for Nobel Chemistry Prize
- Mozambique elects new president in tense vote
- The US economy is solid: Why are voters gloomy?
- Balkan summit to rally support for struggling Ukraine
- New stadium gives Real Madrid a headache
- Alonso, Manaea shine as 'Miracle Mets' blitz Phillies
- Harris, Trump trade blows in US election media blitz
- Harry's Bar in Paris drinks to US straw-poll centenary
- Osama bin Laden's son Omar banned from returning to France
- Afghan man arrested for plotting US election day attack
- Brazil lifts ban on Musk's X, ending standoff over disinformation
- Harris holds slight edge nationally over Trump: poll
- Chelsea edge Real Madrid in Women's Champions League, Lyon win
- Japan PM to dissolve parliament for 'honeymoon' snap election
- 'Diego Lives': Immersive Maradona exhibit hits Barcelona
- Brazil Supreme Court lifts ban on Musk's X
- Scientists sound AI alarm after winning physics Nobel
- Six-year-old girl among missing after Brazil landslide
- Nobel-winning physicist 'unnerved' by AI technology he helped create
- Mexico president rules out new 'war on drugs'
- Israeli defense minister postpones trip to Washington: Pentagon
- Europe skipper Donald in talks with Garcia over Ryder return
- Kenya MPs vote to impeach deputy president in historic move
- Former US coach Berhalter named Chicago Fire head coach
- New York Jets fire head coach Saleh: team
- Australia crush New Zealand in Women's T20 World Cup
- US states accuse TikTok of harming young users
- 'Evacuate now, now, now': Florida braces for next hurricane
- US Supreme Court skeptical of challenge to 'ghost guns' regulation
- Sparks fly as Orban berates EU 'elites' in parliament trip
- US finalizes rule to remove lead pipes within a decade
- Solanke hungry for second England cap after seven-year wait
Fakery and fraud: Energy scammers cast 'wide net' on Facebook
A Filipino consumer fumes as she rips open a portable charger to discover she has been conned -- the batteries are choked with sand, making her yet another victim of scammers on Facebook.
AFP's fact checkers have uncovered a slew of energy-related scams proliferating on Facebook -- from fake solar panel incentives in the United States to hoax electric bike giveaways in Indonesia and the sale of dud devices in the Philippines.
And the trend underscores how fraudsters worldwide profit off disinformation, casting a wide net across social media users, many of whom take the bait amid a cost of living crisis and high utility and energy costs.
"What they did was awful," the 24-year-old Filipino, Brenilyn Ayachock, vented in an online video that showed sand pouring out of the power bank as she opened it with a knife.
"We were expecting a good product, but this is what they sent us."
Ayachock made the purchase on what appeared to be the Facebook page of a legitimate energy device retailer, with "special offers" and "flash sales" alongside environment-friendly messages such as "turn off unnecessary lights."
The page stopped responding to her, Ayachock said, after she bought the device for 1,500 pesos ($28), a small fortune at a time of galloping inflation.
She immediately reported the page to Facebook, but it was still active as of this week.
- 'Scammers follow headlines' -
Ayachock is far from the only victim as social media becomes a breeding ground for everything from bogus cryptocurrency ads, to "romance" scams and hoaxes aimed at extracting people's personal data.
Last year, the Philippines government warned against "unscrupulous" money-saving offers as consumers grappled with backbreaking utility prices.
AFP debunked Facebook posts that used doctored news reports to promote a bogus "power saving" device they claimed could slash electricity bills.
The warnings fell on deaf ears, with commercial data showing thousands of such gadgets are sold monthly. Activists say complaints in online reviews are drowned out by comments from people desperate to try anything to lower their expenses.
"Scammers follow the headlines and there isn't a day that goes by that we don't hear about how to conserve energy, rising gas and utility prices and the need for renewable energy," Amy Nofziger, director of fraud victim support at the US-based nonprofit AARP, told AFP.
"It's a wide net for scammers. Most social media sites do not thoroughly vet the ads placed on their sites, however many users do not know this and they put their full trust in these advertisements."
The ease with which fraudsters pelt users with disinformation raises questions about the capacity of platforms like Facebook to police paid-for scam advertising that is a lucrative revenue source.
Critics, including Patricia Schouker, a fellow at the Colorado-based Payne Institute, say algorithms that prioritize content based on preferences have let scam ads prey on users most likely to engage.
- 'Scams evolving' -
A spokesperson for Meta, Facebook's owner, said it views the "threat of scams seriously" and had taken action including disabling many of the ad accounts responsible for fraud reported by AFP's fact checkers.
"The people who push these kinds of ads are persistent, well-funded, and are constantly evolving," the spokesperson said.
AFP has a global team of journalists who debunk misinformation as part of Meta's third-party fact-checking program.
Last October, AFP debunked Facebook posts claiming free electric bikes were on offer in Indonesia after the government raised fuel prices. Meta said it had disabled pages and profiles linked to the scam.
But Hendro Sutono, a member of the citizen's group Indonesia Electric Motorcycle Community, voiced concern that fake stores offering electric bikes have cropped up on the platform -- and are hard to detect.
"The schemers take pictures from the real stores and repost them on their cloned accounts, so they look really legitimate," Sutono told AFP.
Sutono said he feared fraud could tarnish the image of the electric vehicles to the extent people will give up using them.
In many cases in the United States, scammers pose as utility company representatives. One Oregon-based firm warned its consumers last year that "scams are constantly evolving" and fraudsters tried to target some of them using "Facebook messenger."
"We see a growing number of utility front groups which are organizations that appear independent but are targeting their audience via Facebook, Instagram and TikTok," Schouker told AFP.
"They amplify misinformation... while masking their true identity."
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S.Gregor--AMWN