![]() In a conversation with Mashable, Luan explained how these scammers often track what legit ecommerce shops are selling to see what's popular and then clone the websites and its products. Luan says he does not know these individuals personally. Nguyen Luan, a computer engineer based in Vietnam who is familiar with the scam says he's aware of the scam tactics because he runs legit ecommerce shops that have all but gone out of business as an effect of the grift. When Mayse posted some information to her Facebook profile, one of her followers reached out. ![]() The scammers appear to be based out of Vietnam. The scammers accidentally added Loni Mayse as an editor on one of their own Facebook Pages. For example, the Facebook pixel tells us that one of the other websites they were advertising is an ecommerce shop called "." Using this, one can find all the campaigns attached to the ad account connected to the pixel. "They left way too many breadcrumbs," Mayse tells me, providing the Facebook Pixel used by the scammers.Ī Facebook Pixel is a piece of code that allows the social media company to track the effectiveness of your ad campaigns. It's known who they are, or at least what they go by on Facebook, thanks to sloppiness on their part. Perhaps the most incredible thing about this scam is that the alleged perpetrators are openly bragging about their success right on Facebook, on what appears to be legitimate profile pages. One possibility is that the scammers were able to swipe Mayse's EAAB, a static access token that provides a user account with access to Facebook's API. exe file provided the scammers with remote access to her computer as she was monitoring the actions in real-time. Upon doing so, the scammers were able to completely bypass the two-factor authentication she has on her Facebook account. The unsolicited Facebook messages sent to Loni Mayse. exe file from someone they don't know as its often used to install viruses and other nefarious software on their computers.Įcommerce strategist Alex Stiehl tells Mashable he was also targeted, but had seen the spreading warnings about the scam. exe on the other hand is an executable file often used to run or install applications on a Windows-based PC. exe file download, disguised as an innocent PDF, which gives the scammer access to the target's Facebook Business Manager.Ī PDF is just simply a document file. After their pitch, they'll send over a project proposal with all the details about the company, budget, and what they're looking to do. A scammer will reach out to a digital marketer via Facebook Messenger posing as someone looking to hire a Facebook ad campaign manager. How are these scammers gaining access to all these Facebook ad accounts? ShopBase did not immediately respond to Mashable's request for comment. In fact, the majority of the ecommerce shops involved in this particular scam ring appear to be built on the ShopBase platform. ![]() The tens of thousands of dollars a day in Facebook ads that the scammers had access to were pushing users to an online shop called "." The site is built using ShopBase, an ecommerce platform like Shopify located in San Francisco. Ī screenshot of Loni Mayse's Facebook ad manager showing the scammer's ad and the $15k per day advertising budget that they set. In another, they added a fake profile utilizing her own name, Loni Mayse, perhaps in an effort to make the duplicate look like a glitch and not an actual separate unauthorized account added to her Business Manager. In one instance, the scammers tried to spoof Facebook support by using a fake customer service email address for the user being added to the account. She explained how their emails and usernames tried to disguise what they were doing. They also changed the names of the Facebook pages. Mayse says the scammers quickly placed two unauthorized users inside her Facebook Business Manager, which is the backend portal that allows social media managers and marketers to run multiple Facebook Pages and ad accounts from one dashboard. Bypassed every single Facebook security protocol as well." " were in about 10 of my accounts within minutes," she explained in an online conversation with Mashable. "Let's be honest who the fuck wants that?" she said, referring to the product being hawked via ads on a Facebook post describing the nightmare scenario she just went through. The fraudulent ads running on Loni Mayse's Facebook pages were pushing users to this ecommerce store.
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