Yet Another Verified Facebook Page Impersonating Elon Musk Surfaces

A verified Facebook web page that was posing as Elon Musk and had 70,000 followers has been pulled from the social networking website. It was one more incident simply over a month after an analogous Facebook web page impersonating the Tesla chief appeared on-line. The newly found fan web page appeared to be created by cryptocurrency scammers as one in all its current posts was discovered to be asking customers to attach with the proprietor over direct messages for an unknown digital forex.

Cybersecurity researcher Ehraz Ahmed found the falsely verified Facebook web page of Elon Musk final month. He informed Gadgets 360 that he initially discovered the sooner Facebook web page of Musk that was made unavailable in November.

“I was sure that this wasn’t the end and that the scammers would come up with a similar scam. But what I didn’t expect was that the new fake page would pop up so soon,” the Bengaluru-based researcher mentioned.

The web page in query was created again in May 2015, as per the main points obtainable on the About part. Interestingly, it didn’t endure any title modifications which was not the case with the earlier verified web page that appeared and was removed final month as that obtained title updates at the least six occasions in 2021 and was initially created to characterize a “Kizito Gavin” — the reversed title of Uganda soccer participant Gavin Kizito.

Facebook confirmed that the verified web page was managed by folks in Germany and Spain 

Although the title on the Facebook web page was correct and accurately spelled, its URL was misspelt and was seen as https://www.facebook.com/ellonnmusk. This itself hinted at one thing fishy. Further, the verified web page confirmed it was managed by some folks from Germany and Spain. Musk is notably based in Texas and never in Europe.

Ahmed acknowledged that each earlier and the newly found Facebook pages gave the impression to be part of a cryptocurrency rip-off.

“The previous page that I reported asked people to send Bitcoins and promised them a doubled amount in return,” he mentioned. “This time, the scammers cum impersonators took a different route. They made a post saying Musk is coming up with a new coin called #MUSKCoin. And those who are interested in knowing more about this digital currency can message him directly.”

The information about one other verified Facebook web page of Musk was first reported by Web News Observer final week. However, Gadgets 360 was in a position to independently confirm that the web page was reside till Monday, and it was eliminated shortly after we mentioned its particulars with Facebook dad or mum Meta. The firm, although, didn’t reply to a number of requests for a touch upon the matter.

It is just not but clear whether or not the web page was eliminated by Facebook or instantly from its house owners.

Facebook as “lame”
Musk, who has been fairly energetic on Twitter, in February final yr known as Facebook “lame” in a tweet that carried the hashtag: #DeleteFacebook. It was in response to an anti-Facebook tweet posted by Hollywood actor and producer Sacha Baron Cohen. However, it wasn’t the primary time that the 50-year-old billionaire confirmed his detachment with the social networking platform.

In 2018, Musk said in that yr and known as Facebook lame on the time.

Musk has additionally not formally been on Meta’s Instagram since August 2018.

Ineffective regardless of rigorous verification course of
Facebook says in a assist web page that the verified badge confirms that the web page or profile on its platform has the genuine presence of the general public determine or model it represents. The firm claims that it considers “a number of factors when evaluating Facebook Pages and profiles to determine whether they’re in the public interest and meet our verification criteria.” It additionally asks for an official identification document resembling a driving licence or passport of the web page or profile proprietor for verification. However, plainly such a rigorous course of doesn’t assist prohibit pretend verifications.

“For Facebook to be making such egregious errors as authenticating this fake Elon Musk account strongly suggests that the company simply has not put sufficient resources into human-centric review process and are instead hoping its artificial intelligence (AI) systems will work well enough — and they probably do work well in many instances but we know they will also fail in many particular instances,” mentioned Noah Giansiracusa, a professor at Bentley University in Boston.

Giansiracusa lately wrote a e book known as “How Algorithms Create and Prevent Fake News” to level out challenges in utilizing AI and human moderation to limit false content material on-line.

Facebook has been infamous for permitting pretend information and misinformation on its platform. The platform did attempt to resolve these issues by bringing updates within the current previous, however pretend and duplicate customers is without doubt one of the points that it has not but been efficiently addressed.

In an earnings name in 2018, Meta CFO David Wehner acknowledged the issue of duplicate customers. He stated that “the Facebook MAU number does count multiple accounts for a single user when such accounts exist, and we estimate those represent approximately 10 percent of our Facebook MAUs as previously disclosed in the limitation of key metrics section in our SEC filings.”

Meta former worker and whistleblower Frances Haugen additionally earlier this yr raised the corporate’s problem of mishandling duplicate accounts.

Giansiracusa informed Gadgets 360 that by contemplating Facebook having restricted management over eradicating duplicate and pretend accounts, it means that the platform’s AI algorithms usually are not environment friendly and are ineffective in taking motion towards impersonating profiles.

“With fake accounts like this Elon Musk one, I’m left wondering whether Facebook actually cares enough to really tackle this problem — because even these fake accounts draw large amounts of engagement and hence bring profit to Facebook, so what’s the real incentive for the company to rein them in?” he requested.