Meta takes down 63K romance scammer accounts
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Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has removed roughly 63,000 accounts and is banning all future content from a notorious online cybercriminal ring that's targeted U.S. adults in financial sextortion scams.
Why it matters: This is the toughest enforcement action against a financial sextortion from a social media company to-date.
- Financial sextortion rings trick victims into send explicit images of themselves and then threaten to publish them widely if they don't receive a financial payment.
Driving the news: Earlier this year, Wired and NBC News reported on dozens of social media accounts where members of the so-called "Yahoo Boys" traded information about romance scams.
- Accounts were found across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Telegram and more.
Zoom in: Meta has removed around 63,000 accounts in Nigeria that had been attempting to target people as part of these scams, the company said Wednesday.
- The takedowns include a coordinated network of around 2,500 accounts run by about 20 scammers that primarily targeted U.S. adult men.
- Meta banned members of the Yahoo Boys — a cybercriminal group largely based out of Nigeria that also facilitated financial sextortion — from its platforms under its Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy.
- This means all future accounts tied to the group will be removed as soon as Meta becomes aware of them.
- The company has also removed 1,300 Facebook accounts, 200 Facebook pages and 5,700 Facebook groups based in Nigeria where people were trading and selling resources for conducting their own online scams.
Threat level: Meta says most of these accounts were unsuccessful in their attempts to extort users and mostly targeted adults.
- However, some scammers did target minors and those accounts have been reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for further investigation, the company said.
- Meta also shared its information with other social media companies to help in their own investigations.
Yes, but: "Because this is an adversarial place, we will see people who will try to come back onto the platform once we remove them," Antigone Davis, Meta's global head of safety, told reporters during a press briefing Tuesday.
Between the lines: Social media companies have long banned overtly criminal activities on their platforms, but they've struggled to keep up with the proliferation of romance scammers.
- Meta said it found some of these accounts it removed through new signals intelligence that's been added to automatic detection tools for finding malicious behavior.
What's next: Meta has started testing a new on-device feature that scans Instagram direct messages and automatically blurs any images that appear to include nudity.
- If the tests go well, Meta could expand the tool to other messaging features across its social platforms, Davis said.
Go deeper: Romance scammers cash in
