Key Data
- Threat actors immediately target new Truth Social users — Netcraft received more than 30 messages within hours of creating an account.
- Truth Social’s structure gives threat actors easy access to target groups with more than 100,000 members.
- Advance Fee Fraud scams average $250, with some scammers asking for as much as $1,000 at once on Truth Social.
- Central European, French-speaking threat actor prey on global victims by impersonating trusted brands including: Spotify, Disney+, EasyPark, Sky, Netflix, and Google.
Overview
Truth Social — the social media platform created by Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) in 2022 — is being abused to deploy scams at scale, from phishing websites to investment scams, according to Netcraft analysis.
Case in point: The Netcraft team received more than 30 scam messages within just a few hours of creating a single account on Truth Social. And, the cost of falling for these scams can be high.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reported that 1 in 4 Americans who reported losing money to fraud since 2021 said it started on social media. During this same time period, reported losses to scams on social media hit $2.7 billion, far higher than any other method of contact. But this doesn’t include the large portion of scams that go unreported – and only looks at the United States. The true cost of social media scams worldwide is likely billions, if not trillions.
Looking more closely at Truth Social, Gizmodo explored consumer complaints filed with the FTC over the past two years. According to the research, the complaints about scams are “the most shocking, if only because there are such large sums of money involved.”
This blog post details Netcraft’s initial analysis of threat actors and malicious campaigns being used on Truth Social to target its users. Netcraft continually …