Meta has announced that it has shut down 63,000 Instagram accounts based in Nigeria that it says were engaged in financial sextortion scams.
Details
Meta this year deployed tools where it would automatically send suspected sextortion account messages to users’ hidden requests folder. The platform would display safety notices which would prompt users to report threats to share private images.
Meta states that the new tools helped track down a network of sextortion accounts.
By The Numbers
Of the 63,000 accounts Meta said it removed, 2,500 which were part of a coordinated network linked to a group of 20 people.
The crime network mostly targeted adult men in the US, and most of their attempts were unsuccessful.
Meta said it was able to find more accounts in Nigeria engaged in similar scams, leading to the rest of the accounts it removed.
Zoom In
Meta stated that it also removed thousands of Facebook accounts, groups, and pages based in Nigeria that gave scammers tips, and fake photos to use on accounts and scripts.
Zoom Out
In recent news, Nigeria’s consumer protection agency fined Meta’s WhatsApp platform $220 million for data abuses.
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