Facebook is slammed for allowing fraudsters to buy ads on social network
One false ad claimed Richard Branson was promoting a bitcoin scam
FACEBOOK was today blasted for profiting from fraudsters by allowing them to buy scam adverts on the social network.
The US web giant hosted ads wrongly claiming that Richard Branson is promoting a get-rich-quick scheme dealing in bitcoin.
There were also paid links to pages which have been accused of trying to steal web users' passwords.
Facebook has now removed the ads - but only after the media alerted the company to what the scammers were doing.
Senior Tory MP Damian Collins, chairman of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee, slammed the firm for making money off the back of the frauds.
He said: "Fake adverts displayed on social media platforms are a real problem, and one that the social media companies must tackle.
"It is wrong that social media companies, such as Facebook, are profiting from phishing scams and fake adverts that are harmful to their platform's users."
One ad, exposed by entrepreneur Gavin Sheridan, featured an image of Richard Branson with the headline "Richard Hacks Multiple Crypto Exchanges!"
It linked to a fake CNN page - which in turn went through to a scam site wrongly promising users can win free bitcoins.
Mr Sheridan said: "If you have 2billion users and an ad like this appears, even for a few hours, it could potentially impact thousands, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people, depending on how the ad was targeted."
Another Facebook ad claimed to be a "step-by-step guide" to earning digital currencies - but in fact only encouraged users to hand over the passwords to their collection of online cash.
A third used a doctored video of an online gaming star, captioned "Bitcoin hack will blow your mind".
It linked through to an online shopping website which sells toys - with no connection to the message in the original ad.
The only things needed to promote a post on Facebook are a log-in to the site, and a credit card.
Advertisers can choose which groups of users they want to target with their promoted messages.
Facebook removed the bitcoin-related scams after being told about them by the Press Association news agency.
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A spokesman for the firm said today: “Fraudulent advertising is strictly prohibited on Facebook.
"We thank Press Association for bringing these adverts to our attention, which have been removed for violating our policies and the associated pages and accounts have been unpublished.
"We urge people to use the reporting tools available on every advert so we can investigate and take swift action where necessary.”