About a year after the financial authorities introduced self-regulation to preemptively block the distribution of illegal financial advertisements, hundreds of thousands of fraudulent accounts have been detected, and related report cases have decreased by half.
The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) announced on the 5th that it achieved these results by implementing self-regulation in cooperation with Kakao and Google since August of last year. The FSS judged that as the influence of online platforms such as portals and social media expanded, cases of illegal operators distributing illegal financial advertisements in online spaces surged, prompting the introduction of self-regulation.
As part of the self-regulation, Kakao introduced a fake signal system that utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) to detect and alert users to profiles suspected of impersonating financial company employees or committing fraud, leading to the identification and restriction of approximately 52,000 illegal trading group accounts and 221,000 impersonation and fraud accounts as of June.
Google implemented the Financial Services Verification (FSV) system in November of last year, allowing only certified advertisers to advertise financial services and products. As a result, the average monthly user reports of illegal financial advertisements decreased by 50% during the first six months after the system was introduced.
The FSS has determined that self-regulation has produced significant results and plans to guide the need for its introduction to other online platforms, thereby expanding self-regulation within the platform industry. The FSS stated, "We will continue discussions among relevant agencies to ensure that the system of imposing obligations on online platforms to prevent the distribution of illegal financial advertisements is swiftly legislated."