By searching just a few slang terms used by fraudsters, Which? Money quickly found 50 scam profiles, pages and groups on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

The pages were found advertising a mixture of stolen identities, credit card details, compromised Netflix and Uber Eats accounts, as well as fraud ‘how to’ guides and even fake passports made to order.

Such details could be used to borrow money in victims’ names or to steal from the victims themselves. However, Which? Money has reported that when it reported these criminal pages using the social media sites’ reporting tools, many were left up and running.

Which? Money said that it found user accounts, groups and posts promoting identity theft and other types of fraud on three of the world’s most popular social media sites.

The organisation described much of the advertising of such services as ‘brazen’ with the data sellers adopting usernames such as ‘frawdgod’, ‘scamgod’ and ‘fullzforsell’. One Twitter user had a personal biography, which stated ‘cloned cards and dumps + Pin’, and included a WhatsApp number for secure encrypted messaging.

Which? Money reported all 50 of the groups, pages and profiles that it found in the investigation to their respective social media platforms via there in-site reporting tools.

Initially, Facebook refused to remove a post containing extensive stolen personal details leading to a man in Yorkshire. When Which? Money requested a review of the decision, the post was removed, but the hacker group it was posted on remained up.

Facebook removed a few other isolated posts, but when the Which? Money checked six days after making the reports, it had left up every page and group.

The organisation then presented its findings to the platforms’ media representatives. All the reported content across all three platforms has now been removed.

Facebook said: “Fraudulent activity is not tolerated on our platforms, and we have removed the groups and profiles flagged to us by Which? Money for violating our policies. We continue to invest in people and technology to identify and remove fraudulent content, and we urge people to report any suspicious content to us so we can take action.”