Thai SEC: Crackdown on Misleading Crypto Ads

SEC of Thailand strives to save crypto investors from being duped by misleading commercials.

The Thai SEC, on April 29, reportedly warned all crypto exchanges in operation to not glamourize crypto investments and, in fact, adhere to prescribed standards for advertisements.

According to Deputy Secretary-General Anek Yooyuen, the SEC was worried that crypto exchanges were giving "special privileges" to rope in users.

According to the report, crypto ads containing false, exaggerated, distorted, concealing, or misleading information will be against the regulations in Thailand.

Misleading Cryptocurrency Advertisements: Regulators Flex Their Mus

Thai SEC will follow similar action by regulators in other prominent crypto markets.

In 2023, for example, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) of the United Kingdom issued 450 alerts for illegal crypto ads.

In November 2023, the National Stock Market Commission (CNMV) of Spain also condemned fraudulent promotion of crypto assets, underlining that companies have to follow local law.

The SEC, on the other hand, reminded even the crypto exchanges to put appropriate warnings of investment risks in their advertisements and cautioned them not to onboard new users through special promotions. Yooyuen emphasized that the SEC advertising guidelines are meant to protect users from undue risks. It is, therefore, noted with an open mind that enticing users to get rewards without considering investment risk, especially on cryptocurrencies, may be dangerous.

Violations of the guidelines will result in punishment according to the law.

Thai advertising guidelines require businesses and advertisers to substantiate the "facts" stated in their marketing campaigns to ensure that the laws of the country are not broken.

Ads hijacked on Etherscan by hackers

In another case, hackers had recently hijacked adverts on Etherscan, the popular blockchain explorer, redirecting users to phishing sites designed to drain crypto wallets.

The large-scale phishing campaign, according to human-machine blockchain investigation firm Scam Sniffer, has been attributed to lack of oversight from advertisement aggregators. Insufficient filtering would mean that these platforms, such as Coinzilla and Persona, from where Etherscan aggregates ads, would mean they are exposing their clients to phishing attempts.

In the case of a wallet-drainer scam, users are deceived to visit scam websites and connect their crypto wallets, due to which scammers are allowed to withdraw funds to their wallet addresses without any authentication of a user or person.

Last week also, Google Ads, an online advertising platform by Google, hyped malicious crypto websites through which users were exposed to a phishing scam.

Threat actors used Google Ads to share a fake version of Whales Market, an over-the-counter (OTC) crypto platform that allows the trading of airdropped tokens. The search results present an advertisement at the very top, containing the version of the website with the compromise, thereby luring the unsuspecting users to the trap.

Earlier this month, Google took legal action against two Chinese people, Yunfeng Sun and Hongnam Cheung, for their use of the Google Play Store to defraud people by making fake crypto investments. While the lawsuit did not name the specific applications involved, Google told they had pulled 87 fraudulent apps tied to Sun and Cheung over the past four years.