Scam ads promoting fake tax breaks prosper on Facebook

Hundreds of ads on Facebook promised U.S. homeowners that they were eligible for huge state tax breaks if they installed new solar-energy panels. There was just one catch: None of it was true.

The scam ads used photos of nearly every U.S. governor — and sometimes President Donald Trump — to claim that with new, lucrative tax incentives, people might actually make money by installing solar technology on their homes. Facebook users only needed to enter their addresses, email, utility information and phone number to find out more. Those incentives don’t exist.

While the ads didn’t aim to bilk people of money directly — and it wasn’t possible to buy solar panels through these ads — they led to websites that harvested personal information that could be used to expose respondents to future come-ons, both scammy and legitimate. It’s not clear that the data was actually used in such a manner.

Facebook apparently didn’t take action until notified by state government officials who noticed the ads.

The fictitious notices reveal how easily scammers can pelt internet users with misinformation for months, undetected. They also raise further questions about whether big tech companies such as Facebook are capable of policing misleading ads, especially as the 2020 elections — and the prospect of another onslaught of online misinformation — loom.

“This is definitely concerning — definitely, it’s misinformation,” said Young Mie Kim, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor. “I keep telling people: We don’t have any basis to regulate such a thing.”