Meta sued an advertising account in Vietnam

In an announcement on February 27, Meta’s representative in Vietnam said it was taking “drastic legal measures” to destroy fraudulent advertising networks, including suing the owner of an advertising account, Ly Van Lam.

This account is said to have used “cloaking” to circumvent the review process. Cloaking is a scam by displaying a seemingly legitimate version of a website to bypass the censorship system, but in reality displays different content to users.

Accordingly, Ly Van Lam’s account ran fraudulent ads with offers of “shocking” discount products from brands like Longchamp, on the condition that users complete a survey. “When interacting with ads, users are redirected to websites that require credit card information to make purchases, but do not actually receive the product. Their credit cards will then incur unauthorized recurring charges, a form known as recurring fee fraud,” Meta’s announcement reads.

Details of the lawsuit were not released. In the blog post, Meta quoted a Longchamp representative welcoming the move and saying it would invest resources in combating illegal activities such as counterfeiting or fraud using the company’s brand, including in real and digital environments.

In addition to legal measures, Meta said it will upgrade its ability to detect cloaking by applying AI to analyze tricks and more accurately identify ads redirecting to fraudulent websites.

Advertisements with malicious and fraudulent content have been rampant on many social networks in Vietnam recently but have not been thoroughly resolved. Meta, the company behind Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, said that in the first six months of 2025, it detected and handled nearly 12 million accounts linked to “fraud centers” on the above platforms.

In Vietnam alone, Meta removed more than 5.4 million pieces of content on Facebook and 14,000 pieces of content on Instagram due to violating policies on fraud, deception and misleading behavior. More than 116,000 Facebook accounts and 28,000 Instagram accounts were suspended, with 65% on Facebook and 93% on Instagram detected and removed automatically.

In addition, the company also said it sent a cease-and-desist letter to eight business partners for providing fraudulent services, such as account recovery services and renting access to “trusted” accounts to avoid the censorship system.

“Meta will consider further legal measures, including lawsuits, if relevant parties do not comply with the regulations,” the notice stated.

In addition to Vietnam, Mark Zuckerberg’s company also steps up to prevent scams that take advantage of celebrities’ images in Brazil and China. These groups use edited images and voices to advertise unapproved medical products, or set up spontaneous “investment groups” to scam users in many countries. This tactic is called “celeb bait”, which means using famous people as bait. Fraudulent ads are “disguised” to look like legitimate ads, making it difficult for users to recognize. Those ads then lead to websites asking users to provide personal information or transfer money.