How to spot a scam ad before you click it

Scam adverts turn up in the same places as ordinary ads: your social media feed, search results, apps. They copy real brands, offer deals that look too good to pass up, or warn you that your device has a problem that needs fixing right now. In the US, the Federal Trade Commission asked in September whether platforms should be required to stop impersonation scam ads from reaching people at all. That question is still open. In the meantime, across Europe, social platforms served close to one trillion scam ads in 2025, generating an estimated £3.8 billion in ad revenue. Meta itself projected that around 10% of its 2024 revenue, roughly $16 billion, would come from ads for scams and banned goods.

None of this means every ad you see is fraudulent. It means scam ads are a normal, ongoing part of the advertising ecosystem, not a rare glitch, and nearly a third of people who lost money to a scam last year said it started with one.

What this actually means for you

Social media companies in the US and elsewhere are not currently legally required to police scam ads or compensate you if one costs you money. The FTC's process could eventually force platforms to vet advertisers and remove fraudulent ads, but that's at its earliest stage. Right now, spotting a scam ad is still mostly on you.

In the UK, if a scam does cost you money, your bank is responsible for reimbursing you in some instances of authorised push payment (APP) fraud. That's a real protection, but it depends on the circumstances and on reporting the fraud quickly.

How to spot a scam ad

Look out for:

• Urgent language: "offer ends tonight", "your account will be suspended"
• Deals that are far better than anything a real retailer would offer
• Requests for personal or financial information to claim a prize or giveaway
• Fake security warnings telling you to call a number or download software
• Customer support ads for your bank that didn't come from your bank's own app or website
• Investment opportunities, especially cryptocurrency, promising high returns
• Celebrity endorsements, which are sometimes deepfaked
• Sensational clickbait headlines designed purely to get a click

If an ad pushes you to call a phone number, be cautious. Some of these numbers route to scam call centres whose job is to extract money or personal details from you over the phone. Legitimate companies generally want you to go through their official app, website or published support line, not a number in an advert.

Some scam ads aren't about getting your details at all. They're malvertising: adverts that exploit a flaw in your browser or software, or trick you into installing something malicious disguised as an app or update.

If you've already clicked, or acted on one

Don't panic, and stop replying to whoever is on the other end.

• Contact your bank or card provider immediately if you've shared payment details or made a payment. Ask them to freeze the account or card.
• Ask about your options. If you made a bank transfer, ask about an APP fraud claim. If you paid by card, ask about a chargeback.
• Change any passwords you shared, and anywhere else you've reused them. Turn on two-factor authentication.
• Run a security scan if you downloaded anything from the ad, and make sure your operating system and apps are up to date.
• Monitor your accounts for anything unusual over the following weeks.
• Keep evidence: screenshots of the ad, the URL, messages, payment records. You may need these for a claim.
• Report it. Report the ad to the platform that showed it, and report the scam itself to Report Fraud, the UK's fraud reporting service.

What this does not fix

A VPN does not stop scam ads appearing in your feed, and it will not vet an advertiser for you. It encrypts your connection and hides your IP address from the sites you visit, which is a different job entirely. No tool, including ours, can tell you with certainty that an ad is genuine before you click it. What checking a link or a message against known patterns can do is flag the obvious signs, urgent language, mismatched URLs, known scam phrasing, so you have one more piece of information before you decide.

If you want to check a suspicious message before you act on it, Veystrix's free scam checker is at /tools/scam. If you've got a link you're not sure about, /tools/url will check it without you having to open it first.