Many of them involved impersonations of the stock exchange and its management, particularly its CEO Umar Swift, it warned.
In a statement today, the local bourse said that it found “an alarming number of these impersonations on Facebook, in fact over 60 pages this year, with a spike in recent months”.
“As alerted through past media statements and social media postings, the exchange reiterates that these fake pages and sponsored advertisements have no relation to Umar nor the exchange,” Bursa said.
It cautioned the public that any communication other than through Bursa’s verified and official website and social media channels is unauthorised and unlawful, designed to mislead or deceive people.
“Despite submitting recurring take down reports that establish a very simple and clear pattern of impersonation, we are very concerned that incidents of the same nature continue to occur.
“We need the relevant entities, including Meta, to put in place algorithms or checks to prevent, or quickly detect and put a stop to these blatant scams, which thrive on identity theft and fraud,” said Umar in the statement.
He stressed the need for Meta to take further measures to prevent confusion and fraud among its users, as well as to mitigate reputational damage and negative associations with affected individuals and entities.
Many prominent Malaysian figures and companies have also been targeted with similar scam tactics, he noted.
Bursa also expressed its support for the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) to take action against Meta, the parent company of Facebook, for its failure to remove “undesirable content”, including scam advertisements, from its platform.
The “undesirable content” in question includes elements of defamation, impersonation, online gambling, scam advertisements, and aspects of race, religion and royalty, collectively known as 3R.
Communications and digital minister Fahmi Fadzil had also criticised Meta previously for its slow response in detecting scams.
According to MCMC, a total of 744 reports related to online scams involving Facebook were recorded from January to May 25, 2023.