Migrants targeted in Canadian immigration scam on Facebook

Scammers posing as Canadian immigration lawyers have targeted Facebook groups with tens of thousands of users, a new report reveals.

The posts, documented in a new report by the Tech Transparency Project (TTP), the research arm of watchdog group the Campaign for Accountability, have been flagged as potentially fraudulent by Latin American and Canadian authorities but continue to proliferate.

Purporting to be authored by Canadian immigration lawyers, the posts claim that Canada is recruiting more than 400,000 people for a jobs program that will grant those accepted an immediate work permit.

The scam offers to help migrants apply for the program and obtain a visa, and requires them to enter sensitive personal information on websites before prompting them to share the link with 15 friends via WhatsApp to access any visa or immigration information.

The users are ultimately not provided with any helpful immigration information after sending the link.

The posts have been shared in at least 12 Facebook groups with followings ranging between 2,700 and nearly 190,000 users. The groups had at least 570,000 users in total, according to TTP.

Another company leveraged to perpetuate the scam, URL shortener TinyURL, terminated a link during an early version of the scam, saying it violated the terms of service prohibiting use of the platform to spread spam, malware or defraud other people.

Some of the scam sites were registered to a person in Massachusetts who owned other websites flagged for phishing by Google and blocked on Chrome, TTP investigators said. Attempts to send these links via Gmail also resulted in the message being blocked. The scam links advertising the Canadian recruitment program were not flagged in Chrome, however.

When Facebook launched its controversial Free Basics program, which provides users with access to a handful of applications free of charge, the app became critical infrastructure.

TTP and other experts argue that one of the remedies for content moderation issues related to migrant misinformation is for platforms to deploy more human moderators.

The company said it removes content in Spanish when independent experts warn that it is false and can contribute to immediate physical harm or is highly deceptive or intended to suppress voting. In all other cases of misinformation, Facebook focuses on limiting its distribution, McPike said. The company also issues warning labels when a factchecker rates a post as false, she said.