House VA committee launches investigation of bots using fake news to target veterans, servicemembers

[RV_]

I have been getting scam calls today from a person with a heavy accent claiming that I will have serious problems with the Social Security if I did not return his call! As if! 

Now a new scam that is successfully fooling vets! Their fake Facebook page had more people following it than the real page on FaceBook! REad the article below and be forewarned.

Excerpt:

" WASHINGTON – The House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs launched an investigation Tuesday into “anonymous internet actors” impersonating congressionally chartered veterans service organizations in an effort to scam veterans and servicemembers.

Vietnam Veterans of America has investigated the issue since 2017, when the organization discovered a Facebook page using its name and logo. The page posted politically divisive posts and was followed by nearly 200,000 people – tens of thousands more than the official VVA page.

Facebook Inc. disabled the page after determining it violated VVA’s intellectual property.

Kristofer Goldsmith, associate director for policy and government affairs at VVA, discovered the page in mid-2017. Since then, he’s worked to shut down more fake accounts that target veterans and servicemembers with disinformation.

Goldsmith argued Monday that foreign trolls were targeting the military and veterans community to “weaponize and turn a profit off our patriotism.”

“Veterans organizations have been forced to play defense against a deluge of anonymous overseas actors who work day and night to deceive Americans — stealing our names, logos and reputations to gain their trust,” Goldsmith wrote in an editorial published in Military Times.

Goldsmith said Tuesday that he’s “basically been playing a game of whack-a-mole,” in which he identifies an imposter account and has it disabled, only for it to be created again under a new email address.

During the past several months, Goldsmith has been updating House Democrats about his efforts. He shared with them more than 100 pages of notes and thousands of screenshots.

“Doing it alone has been overwhelming, frankly, so I’m glad to know that [the committee] is going to be helping with this,” he said. “It’s a huge relief that at least I have somebody else’s eyes on this stuff.”

A study from Oxford University in 2017 found Russian operatives used Twitter and Facebook to disseminate “junk news” to veterans and servicemembers."

That whole article is here: 

Full article

More here: https://www.stripes.com/news/veterans/vets-group-calls-on-dod-va-to-help-stop-fake-news-targeting-veterans-troops-1.552279