Having your Facebook account hacked is bad enough. However, according to a recent report from CNET, some cybercriminals are adding insult to injury by using hijacked accounts to purchase tens of thousands of dollars-worth of scam advertising.

While this kind of attack only affects users who are ad account owners, this is still a financially devastating issue that victims say Facebook isn’t taking seriously. Many have accused Facebook’s customer support of being slow to respond or downright unhelpful. In the case of one account owner, the fraudulent ad campaign that was purchased through his account was only shut down because his credit card had expired — not because he had been hacked.

“This is, and has been growing to be, an even more viable opportunity for fraudsters and cybercriminals,” data protection expert Emily Wilson told CNET. “There’s a lot of people on Facebook, and they’re often interacting with it quite mindlessly. Cybercriminals only need a small percentage of people to click on the wrong ad.”

“The way Facebook is designed, and we’ve seen this play out with serious ramifications, is that it’s really easy to run ads for whatever you want,” she continued. “Facebook’s model is to approve first and ask questions later.”

Even if you’re not an ad account owner, it’s still worth it to keep one eye on your account to make sure nothing fishy is going on. Unfortunately, we can’t always trust Facebook to do that for us.

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