It’s barely been a month since the announcement of Libra and there are already fake accounts popping up online that are trying to sell the cryptocurrency.
Facebook announced Libra last month. It’s a cryptocurrency that is going to be headed by a single governing body called the Libra Association and will be used as a means to purchase products, make money transfers and donations. However, it won’t be available any time soon, as Facebook plans to launch it in 2020.
According to recent reports, however, there are already roughly a dozen pages across Facebook and Instagram posing as official pages that are trying to sell Libra. Some are even using official marketing images and designs and are offering the crypto at a discounted rate.
One of the fake videos shared on one of these pages had Zuckerberg with a voiceover, claiming that they had already distributed 20 million Libra coins to early investors.
Quite a few of these fake Facebook and Instagram accounts were removed from their platforms once Facebook was alerted of the situation.
“Facebook removes ads and pages that violate our policies when we become aware of them, and we are constantly working to improve detection of scams on our platforms,” said a spokesperson.
From the looks of it, it seems that whatever system Facebook has in place against fraud detection is well behind these scammers. This indicates how Facebook is struggling to rebuild trust and fight fraud that surrounds its new financial system.
Hopefully, Facebook will get its act together when the currency is actually launched next year.
