Westpac NZ is urging social media giant Meta to do more to protect New Zealanders from fraud and scams on its platforms.
Earlier this month the Financial Markets Authority warned about a rise in scammers using deep fake news articles, complete with AI-generated images, to lure consumers on to fake trading platforms. One fake article, which was linked from Meta platforms, showed deep fake images of Westpac NZ CEO Catherine McGrath clashing with NZ First leader Winston Peters. Kiwibank CEO Steve Jurkovich's image has also been used.
"Even after we reported the scam ad to Meta, different versions of it continued to pop up in Facebook feeds for weeks. Meta is not responding quickly or seriously enough to this sort of harmful content and it's putting New Zealanders' money at risk," Ms McGrath says.
"While this particular ad no longer appears to be circulating, Westpac can't confirm this because it's had no communication from Meta, and it's possible that variations of the scam featuring other high-profile figures are circulating in its place.
"64% of all scam cases we've handled so far this year have originated on social media, up from 57% at the same time last year. These numbers could be even higher, as in many cases our customers are reluctant to tell us where they were first drawn into a scam.
"Right now, it's much faster and easier for a scammer to publish a fake ad than it is for someone to report it and have it pulled down. As a result, people are losing vast amounts of money to bad actors on Meta's platforms, and it needs to change."
In 2024, Meta's own internal documents showed it collected billions of dollars of revenue from ads selling scams or banned goods.
Examples of actions Meta could take to make its platforms safer include:
- Investing more to detect fraud and scam content before it's published;
- Acting faster on reports of fraud or scams and improving transparency by giving users updates about the status of their reports;
- Establishing a direct channel for information security professionals (such as bank financial crime teams) to report validated scam and fraud activity to a team at Meta with the ability to act immediately.
"With Meta missing in action, we continue to urge our customers to be extremely careful when interacting on social media platforms, especially when offered investment opportunities that seem too good to be true."
Ms McGrath says that banks have put in significant effort and resources in recent years to improve the safety of customers, including greater investment in technology and staff training, industry collaboration and always-on customer awareness campaigns.
"As a result, Westpac customer losses to fraud and scams have been falling for several years.
"Meanwhile, Meta continues to make money from scam ads on its platforms. As a member of the anti-scam alliance, Meta's actions could help take a huge bite out of financial crime in Aotearoa, yet it seems unwilling to do more than the bare minimum.
"It's long past time for Meta to step up."
