Gambling sites while looking for a bride
September 30, 20243 Mins Read
Jumbangla Desk: Looking for a husband for a bride back in Italy on Facebook. The bride is 29 years old and owns 4 bighas of land with two storied house. He also owns a coffee shop in Italy. After the wedding, take the bride to Italy. The comment box of a Facebook post also has a contact link for details. But clicking on that link will take you to foreign currency (Forex) cryptocurrency trading and various online gambling sites.
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Independent research platform DismissLab says it has found at least 35 posts on various Facebook pages since last July detailing the search for a husband for this Italian returnee. But somewhere the age has changed, somewhere the amount of bride's land, and somewhere the picture has been changed.
Patra Chai posts provide descriptions of various types of brides. Dismisslab found a total of 430 posts by searching Facebook using 12 sentences or key phrases as samples. The agency says that of the 430 posts sampled for the study, 397, or 92 percent, led to gambling or foreign-currency trading sites. Over a hundred Facebook pages, profiles and groups across multiple networks or cliques were found involved with the campaign. Over a hundred Facebook pages, profiles and groups across multiple networks or cliques were found involved with the campaign.
Affiliate gambling campaigns basically bring customers to online gambling sites with the help of a link. These links are called referral links, each of which has an identifying key. When someone clicks on the referral link, the advertiser (who created and promoted the referral link) can earn from it. Some of these links lead to phishing or phishing sites.
According to the report published on DismissLab website yesterday, 430 posts have been shared more than 11 thousand times and have thousands of comments and more than two lakh reactions. Many are confused by the posts.
According to the policy of Bangladesh Bank, such campaigns are problematic. The bank's policy clearly states that online gambling and investment in forex and cryptocurrencies are illegal.
Meta says such campaigns are against spam and cloaking policies.
DismissLab said its research found several accounts and pages running campaigns in a manner consistent with coordinated inauthentic behavior, or coordinated abusive behavior, according to Meta's policies. But by using almost-believable stories and short links, this campaign is bypassing Facebook's controls.
DismissLab's research also found that the same links used in pot solicitation posts lead to different sites over and over again. Betting sites include – Krikia, Jeetbaaz, Babu88, Baji, Six6BD, Six6SBDT Online etc. Apart from this there are also crypto and forex trading sites like Kotex and Pocket Binance.
Several URL shorteners like Tiny URL, Cutly, Uclick.link are used to hide the original campaign links.
The main goal of these sites is to earn through visitor clicks or traffic. Such websites usually act as part of different ad networks and redirect users to different sites through various pop-up ads.
According to DismissLab, the search found a total of 19 different referral key numbers (referral keys at the end of links) from different domains. 54 pages and profiles used these domains and key numbers in turn. Ashraful Haque, a digital security expert of the international organization Engage Media, said that these key numbers basically carry the identity of those involved in affiliate gambling.
Stars are called to stand by the flood victims
The study found at least four circles or networks that share the same posts and links every day. For example, MN Media, Creative Minds, Moonmoon, Azaira People, Reena Akhtar, Golden View, Sneha Paul, Golden View pages are posting Patrachai campaigns at very close intervals every day.
