Use this form to report online scam ads: including ads on newspaper websites, paid-for search engine ads or ads appearing on social media.

These reports enable us to work quickly and efficiently with ad networks and online publishers to remove obvious scam ads as quickly as possible. You won’t receive a personal response to your report, but we use all information provided as intelligence in our action to tackle scam ads, so please provide as much information as possible.

These scam ads need to be in paid-for space online. For example, ads which:

  • include fake celebrity news, such as reporting a celebrity has been assaulted or has died when that is not true, or link through to websites making these claims.
  • include false celebrity endorsements, such as claiming a celebrity made their money through cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and is encouraging others to do the same, or link through to websites making these claims.

If you would like to submit a complaint about an ad on any other topic, please use our make a complaint page

What to do if you have been scammed

We focus our efforts on removing ads, rather than investigating the scammers themselves.

If you’ve been scammed, for example you’ve handed over money or your personal details, then you can find information and support on Citizen’s Advice’s website here. You can also report all types of scams to Action Fraud, the UK's national reporting centre for fraud and, for international scams, to Econsumer.gov.

 

Report an online scam ad: 

Are you able to supply the ‘clickstring’ for the ad? If so, please give us the clickstring in the box below.

Without this information it is much harder to track down the ad you saw.

How to capture the clickstring

When using a computer:

You can capture it by right clicking and selecting ‘copy link address – if that doesn’t work you may need to disable your computer's internet connection, then copy the URL that's in the address bar in your browser into our form

When using a mobile phone:

Disconnect from any internet or cellular service (for example use ‘Airplane mode’), then click or tap the ad. The ad will attempt to open in a browser window, but because there's no service it will not load. However, the click string will be exposed in the URL. Copy that URL into our form in a separate window.

By submitting this report to us, you confirm that you understand and acknowledge that you are submitting a 'report', and you are not submitting a full and formal complaint. As such you understand you will not receive a personal response from the ASA, and we will use the information you provide as intelligence in our action to tackle scam ads.