Meta shut down 63,000 Instagram accounts based mostly in Nigeria that it says had been engaged in monetary sextortion scams and linked to what Meta calls a “loosely organized” group of cybercriminals referred to as the “Yahoo Boys.”
Meta has been getting severe about cracking down on sextortion scams and educating customers about the right way to keep away from them. Earlier this yr, Meta mentioned it could mechanically ship suspected sextortion account messages to customers’ hidden requests folder. If customers had been already speaking to a possible rip-off or sextortion account, it could show a security discover prompting them to report threats to share non-public photos. Meta mentioned it could additionally make it in order that potential sextortion accounts wouldn’t have the ability to view the “Message” button on teenagers’ profiles, even when they’re already linked.
Meta mentioned that the brand new technical alerts it’s created helped monitor down the community of sextortion accounts. Of the 63,000 accounts Meta mentioned it eliminated, 2,500 had been a part of a coordinated community linked to a bunch of 20 individuals. Meta mentioned the community largely focused grownup males within the US, and most of their makes an attempt had been unsuccessful. After figuring out the community of two,500 accounts, Meta mentioned it was capable of finding extra accounts in Nigeria engaged in related scams, resulting in the remainder of the accounts it eliminated.
Meta additionally eliminated 1000’s of Fb accounts, teams, and pages based mostly in Nigeria that gave scammers ideas, pretend images to make use of on accounts, and scripts. Its system is now figuring out and blocking any makes an attempt by these teams to return to the positioning.
The corporate has been engaged on new options to warn customers about potential scams. Meta mentioned in April it was testing a brand new function that detected photos with nudity in addition to a immediate to inform customers to assume twice earlier than sending a nude picture through direct message. It additionally allow them to unsend the message afterward. The function would additionally show a warning to recipients who attempt to ahead the picture.