When Facebook announced its new digital currency Libra last month, little did Zuckerberg and team knew that fake sellers would soon flood the platform to dupe overexcited social media users.
Facebook’s new digital currency Libra is developed to compete with the global leader of cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin. It is still being rolled out in limitation and is slated to officially launch sometime in early 2020. While the public availability of Libra currency is still many months away many fake Facebook accounts are already offering fake Libra currency.
Facebook Libra: Flood Of Illegitimate Sellers
In light of the issues surrounding privacy concerns and fake accounts of Facebook, it was found that many these accounts were trying to sell the unreleased currency, albeit fake. This also gives rise to questions whether the social media behemoth will be able to successfully rebuild the trust that it has continued to lose amongst users.
There are almost a dozen fake accounts, groups as well as pages distributed across Facebook and photo-sharing app Instagram, which have been portraying themselves as the focal point of this currency. Moreover, some of these pages were also found trying to sell fake Libra currency at discounted prices. But the catch here is that all of these pages require viewers to visit third-party websites that could potentially be fraudulent. Facebook removed quite a few of these accounts on both of these platforms after it was alerted of the same.
Fake Libra Currency: Facebook’s Involvement?
Most of these accounts have been using the official logo of Facebook in addition to Zuckerberg’s and Libra’s official images. This could officially act as a setback to the many efforts that the company has been taking to bring back its lost faith and confidence among the billions of users it has around the world.
Interestingly, many of these fake accounts and pages have hundreds of followers and have now been spreading to Twitter, YouTube and other similar social media platforms too. This is a clear sign that the damages could be so widespread that Facebook might not be able to control it.
Additionally, these concerns require immediate action from Facebook, especially when Facebook Libra is still waiting for the clearance from various U.S regulators. In fact, the situation of already tricky for Zuckerberg and team as US regulators are quite concerned about the global financial stability that Libra could potentially cause, along with issues of consumer protection, user privacy as well as money laundering
Fake videos on the rise:
Quite recently, a fake video had been released in a similar style of a video story available on Facebook. It was labelled as a sponsored post from an account titled “Libra Wallet” and showed the Facebook chief speaking to people from a stage and calling Libra “safe, easy to use and currency of the new world.” The video also offered special discount on Libra coins which have apparently been distributed to early investors. Some viewers have also claimed that they received the video on the popular Chinese messaging platform called WeChat, but could not source the origins of the video.
Quite a few of these fake pages highlighted the website buylibracoins.com, which not only seems legit but has also copied many official marketing materials of Libra, in addition to allowing users to create their accounts and purchase the fake libra currency.
Once launched officially, Facebook Libra claims to enable internet users around the world to do transactions without having to go to a bank or similar credit organisation. To oversee the currency and upcoming transactions, Facebook also created a group called The Libra Association, which is backed by some of the biggest financial leaders in the market, such as eBay, Visa, Mastercard, Uber as well as PayPal.
It will also manage the currency’s wallet service called Calibra. Libra aims to reinvent money and transform the economy of the world so that people around the world can live in a better way.
