ASIC extends scam enforcement capability to social media

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has upped the ante in its fight against investment scams, with its website takedown capability now expanded to cover social media ads.

This comes as the corporate watchdog’s latest enforcement and regulatory update for the last six months confirmed over 14,000 investment scam and phishing websites have been removed since the introduction of its “takedown capability” two years ago, with an average of 130 “malicious” sites taken down every week.

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

“ASIC is shutting down around 130 of these investment scam websites every week which means we are shutting down pathways to reach Australians. ASIC’s traditional toolkit – investigations, court actions, administrative actions – are important, but they can’t combat the scourge of online scams on their own.

“The takedown capability is one example of how we are monitoring the latest trends and acting to protect Australians from those who try 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 update also highlighted the top five strategies used by online investment scam perpetrators to lure users, including:

• AI washing: Scammers claim their fake trading bots use AI to generate passive income and unachievable returns.
• Scam website templates: Scammers use slick templates, fake corporate documents and chatbot plugins to launch convincing copy-cat scam websites quickly.
• Taking advantage of third parties: Scammers embed legitimate-looking third-party content like live trading charts and chatbots to make their fake sites seem credible.
• Fake news articles: Scammers create fake news pages with AI-generated celebrity and prominent Australians fakes to collect contact info and pitch their scams.
• Cloaking: Scammers change the content displayed on the website depending on the location of the target audience and device type.

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