Meta Platforms Inc., the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has removed 63,000 accounts belonging to Nigerian users over attempts to engage in financial sexual extortion scams mostly targeted at adult men in the United States.
The tech company disclosed this in its Q1 2024 Adversarial Threat Report released on Wednesday, July 24, 2024.
Meta said the 63,000 affected accounts were on Instagram and used to distribute blackmail scripts and other phoney schemes.
It added that 7,200 Facebook accounts, pages, and groups dedicated to providing tips on scamming people were also removed.
The social media giant also reported that a smaller coordinated network of around 2,500 linked to a group of around 20 individuals was also taken down.
It said it identified and disabled these accounts courtesy of a combination of advanced technical signals and comprehensive investigations, enhancing its automated fake identities.
“Financial sextortion is a borderless crime, fueled in recent years by the increased activity of Yahoo Boys, loosely organised cybercriminals operating largely out of Nigeria that specialise in different types of scams,” Meta said.
Meta goes tough on scammers
“We’ve removed around 63,000 accounts in Nigeria attempting to target people with financial sextortion scams, including a coordinated network of around 2,500 accounts.”
“We’ve also removed a set of Facebook accounts, Pages, and groups run by Yahoo Boys—banned under our Dangerous Organisations and Individuals policy—that were attempting to organise, recruit and train new scammers,” it explained.
The company found during the investigation that most sammers' attempts were unsuccessful and although mostly targeting adults, some of them targeted minors.
The cases were reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
To help curb these scams on other platforms, Meta shared the information with other tech companies via the Tech Coalition Lantern programme.
It noted further that the 7,2000 Facebook assets removed consisted of 1,300 accounts, 200 pages, and 5,700 groups that were providing scam-related resources.
These assets were discovered to be sharing scripts and guides for scams and sharing links to collections of photos for creating fake accounts.
Since the clean-up operation, Meta's system has been actively blocking attempts from the phoney groups to return whilst continually bolstering its detection capabilities.
The tech giant disclosed it has been collaborating with law enforcement, supporting investigations, and prosecutions by responding to legal requests and alerting authorities to imminent threats.
The firm declared that its efforts extend beyond account removal.
“We also fund and support NCMEC and the International Justice Mission to run Project Boost, a program that trains law enforcement agencies around the world in processing and acting on NCMEC reports.
“We’ve conducted several training sessions so far, including in Nigeria and the Cote d’Ivoire, with our most recent session taking place just last month,” the company revealed.
Meta faces $220m fine in Nigeria
Last week, the Nigerian authorities fined Meta $220m for alleged multiple violations of data protection laws linked to WhatsApp.
In an investigation initiated by the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) in May 2021, the tech giant's privacy policies were found to have infringed on users' rights, including unauthorised data sharing and discriminatory practices.
Meta has debunked the allegation and vowed to appeal the decision, arguing that it disagreed with the findings and imposed penalty.