IOSCO urges a concrete effort from digital platform to disrupt online financial harm.

By a statement published on May 21, 2025, IOSCO – the International Organization of financial markets’ supervisory authorities – launched a strong call for action to the main platform providers so that they strengthen the measures aimed to prevent misuse of their services for fraudulent purposes in detriment of retail investors, consistently with local laws.

The growing use of mobile apps, social media and search engines to promote and purchase financial products and services has created new opportunities but also new risks. Frauds based on paid-for and user-generated contents represent an increasing threat, exacerbated by the cross-border nature of such practices.

Thus, IOSCO calls on platform providers – search engines, social networks, app stores – to reinforce preventive due diligence on advertisers, connect to the IOSCO global portal against unauthorized firms or products (I-SCAN - International Securities and Commodities Alerts Network), and develop effective tools for promptly detecting and removing illegal contents, in collaboration with national authorities.

The full statement is available at: https://www.iosco.org/library/pubdocs/pdf/IOSCOPD797.pdf