Meta takes down 63,000 Nigerian Facebook profiles linked to catfishing and Sextortion scams
Facebook has recently announced its action to crack down on catfishing and sextortion on its platform, removing approximately 63,000 Facebook accounts belonging to Nigerians.
Meta, parent company of Facebook, has recently announced its action to crack down on sextortion on its platform, Starting with the removal of approximately 63,000 Facebook accounts belonging to Nigerian users.
These scams involve acts of impersonation, typically pretending to be attractive men or women, duping victims into sending them illicit or nude images and videos. Which the said scammers then use to blackmail their victims. Scammers then threaten to release these images to the public unless a ransom is paid.
Meta has terminated approximately 7,200 resources, which include 1,300 accounts, 200 pages and 5,700 groups belonging to Nigerian users. These groups facilitated the scams by providing training and resources like scripted dialogues, and links to images used by scammers to create fake identities.
Meta reported that most catfish attempts targeted adult males from the United States. While the attempts were majorly unsuccessful, the company noted instances where minors were targeted instead and reported these to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Due to the advent of the internet, there has been a significant increase in crimes such as Financial sextortion and online catfishing, targetting victims on a global scale. These attacks frequently commence under the guise of online romance. Recent investigations reveal a growing trend of targeting mobile games for exploitation.
These attacks have been known to be led by cybercriminal groups traditionally known as ‘Yahoo Boys’, which engage in various scams with sextortion as merely one of their devices.
To crack down on this, Meta is testing new technology to shield its users from scams, preventing them from falling for such vices. One of these new features includes Instagram's Direct Message (DM) new auto-blur feature that blurs out images if nudity is detected.
