Australians are still becoming victims of online and social media scams losing nearly $2 billion a year.

Forstcue Metals boss Andrew Forrest has recently taken legal action against Facebook due to clickbait advertisements using his image without authority.

Australia’s former national cyber security adviser Alastair MacGibbon told Mark Levy the scammers use other individual images on social media sites to encourage someone to invest in a monetary scheme.

“They are obviously misusing their reputation to carry out fraudulent or not honest enterprise.”

With continuous complaints made to the social media giants, it seems that nothing is being done about it.

Mr MacGibbon believes, whilst the companies are taking action, there’s never any proof of statistics.

“They never give us the stats about how many sites they’ve taken down, how long they’ve stayed up for and how many people have been victimised,” he said.

“I think the public is now at the point where they’ve given up on trusting those websites.”

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Image: Getty