A fake
advert purporting to have been paid for by scandal-hit Cambridge Analytica has
been posted to Facebook.
The ad, now
removed but still visible in Facebook's new ad transparency portal, uses the
logo of EU referendum campaign group BeLeave, which, in July, was found to have
broken electoral law.
It calls for
a new immigration policy, saying: "Our current system is broken."
News site
Business Insider confirmed to the BBC that it made the ad for a story on
Facebook's advertising tools.
Cambridge
Analytica closed down operations in May.
"This
ad was not created by Cambridge Analytica," a Facebook spokesman said.
"It is
fake, violates our policies and has been taken down.
"We
believe people on Facebook should know who is behind the political ads they're
seeing, which is why we are creating the Ads Library so that you can see who is
accountable for any political ad.
"We
have tools for anyone to report suspicious activity such as this."
Jim Edwards,
editor-in-chief of Business Insider UK said, "We hope our story will push
Facebook into making its advertising system more secure and less open to
abuse."
The ad was
spotted by Guardian and Observer journalist Carole Cadwalladr.
"It
just highlights how completely useless Facebook's new transparency rules
are," she told the Media.
"I
can't think how they ever thought they were going to work - anybody can write anything
in that box."
From 16
October, Facebook's new rules for political ads in the UK came into effect.
The social
network had claimed that creators of such ads would have to prove their
identity and location.
However, the
resilience of Facebook's system has been called into question.
News site
Vice was able to post ads purporting to be paid for by every sitting US
senator, a total of 100 individuals.
"Receiving
approval to run an ad 'paid for' by a senator typically just took a few
minutes," said Vice journalist William Turton.
The fake ad
comes as the UK and Canadian parliaments join forces to demand that Facebook
chief executive Mark Zuckerberg respond to MP's questions over the Cambridge
Analytica scandal.
A hearing
will be held by the UK House of Commons digital, culture, media and sport
committee on 27 November.
In a joint
letter, the organisers appealed to Mr Zuckerberg to make an appearance.
"We
would have thought that this responsibility is something that you would want to
take up," wrote chair of the House of Commons committee Damian Collins and
Bob Zimmer, chair of the Canadian standing committee on access to information,
privacy and ethics.
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