Founder’s Letter: Brits Lost £44M to Social Media Scam Ads

I have been trying to get verified on TikTok for over a year.

Every 30 days, I submit the application. Every 30 days, it gets rejected.

I have lost count of how many times I have done this now. Over twelve attempts. I write a regular money column for The Times. I run Investing Insiders, an FCA-authorised and regulated financial platform.

Each time I apply, I raise the same concern: there are copycat accounts on TikTok using my name, my content, and my credibility to push high-risk financial products to people who think they are following me.

But TikTok continue to reject my applications with little information to go from.

For financial content creators, verification is one of the few signals available to an ordinary person scrolling through their feed that an account is who it claims to be.

When a platform refuses to verify the regulated provider and leaves the imitators running unchecked, it is choosing not to protect the people who use that platform.

A white paper from Juniper Research, commissioned by Revolut, found that UK social media users were served 95 billion scam ads in 2025 alone, an average of 185 per month per person. Collectively, British users lost £44 million to scam ads last year, at an average of £1,258 per incident.

The platforms, meanwhile, are not suffering. Social media companies collected an estimated £430 million in 2025 from scam ad revenue targeting UK users alone, a 56% increase on 2022 figures. Scam ads account for roughly one in ten of all social media ad impressions served to European users.

The UK accounts for nearly 11% of that total European revenue, making it one of the most heavily targeted markets on the continent.

This sits alongside data from the FCA’s own review, which found 1,052 illegal finance ads running on Meta in a single week, with more than half placed by advertisers the FCA had already flagged to the platform. The list was sitting there, but the ads ran anyway.

Meta made a voluntary commitment back in 2022 to only allow FCA-authorised firms to run financial ads in the UK. Three years later, that commitment appears largely decorative.

The reason nothing can be done about it right now is frustrating. The Online Safety Act came into force in 2025, but the provisions enabling authorities to penalise platforms for hosting paid scam ads have been delayed until at least 2027.

The FCA can act against the advertisers themselves, but it has no power to fine Meta. Ofcom regulates Meta, but Ofcom has no current powers over paid scam ads either.

There is a gap in the law, and the scammers are driving through it at considerable profit.

Social media platforms reportedly made £430 million in 2025 alone from scam ad revenue targeting UK users, a 56% increase since 2022.

The average victim loses £1,258 per scam ad they engage with. Total UK losses are estimated at £44 million.

Meanwhile, I am on my thirteenth verification attempt.

There is something deeply backwards about a system where platforms profit handsomely from hosting illegal financial promotions, while creating enough friction to keep legitimate regulated operators unverified. I am not suggesting this is deliberate policy on TikTok’s part.

I am suggesting that the incentives are profoundly misaligned, and that ordinary people pay the price for that misalignment.

The BrokerChooser analysis flagged specific phrases to watch for in your social media feed: “unlock £400K”, “instant funding”, “free trading”, “guaranteed profits”, “multiply your potential up to 20x.” If any of those appear in a finance ad, treat it as a red flag.

If the ad then directs you to continue the conversation on WhatsApp or Telegram, stop there. Moving you off-platform is deliberate: once you are in a private message thread, there is no moderation, no record, and no one looking out for you.

If you want to check whether a financial firm or individual is actually authorised to give you advice or promote products, the FCA register at fca.org.uk takes thirty seconds to search.

It should be the first thing you do before acting on any financial content you see online, including mine.

The platforms have the technology to fix this faster than 2027.

They have demonstrated it in other markets: a suspicious investment ad promising unusually high returns was blocked in Australia when Meta asked the advertiser to prove FCA authorisation, but the same ad ran in the UK without further scrutiny.

The capability exists. The will, when there is no financial penalty for its absence, apparently does not.

Rejection number fourteen is due in about three weeks.

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Sources: Juniper Research and Revolut April 2026, FCA press release, April 2026; Technology.org, March 2026. All figures correct at time of publication. This article is for information and commentary purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.