US group Meta has removed more than 70,000 social media accounts, including 63,000 Instagram accounts in Nigeria alone, that attempted to engage in financial sexual blackmail, the company announced on Wednesday. The extortion mainly targeted adult men in the United States. 7,200 Facebook accounts, pages and groups offering scam tips were also removed. “Their attempts included offering to sell scripts and guides that could be used in fraud and sharing links to photo collections that could be used to create false accounts,” Meta said. The company said it also removed a smaller coordinated network of about 2,500 accounts linked to a group of about 20 people.
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Sexual blackmail, also known as “sextortion”, involves threatening to publish real or fake photos if people do not pay for non-publication. Most of the scammers’ attempts were According to a report by Reuters news agency Unsuccessful. Although they usually targeted adults, extortion attempts were also made against minors. Meta reported this to the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a non-profit child protection organization established by the US Congress in the 1980s. Meta representatives said this is not the first time they have stopped such a fraudulent network. They revealed the current operation to “raise awareness.”
Meta under pressure due to inadequate child protection
In recent years, the social media company has gone on the defensive when it comes to protecting children and young people. In late 2023, the US state of New Mexico filed a lawsuit against Meta and its owner and largest shareholder, Mark Zuckerberg. According to the allegation, a large amount of child porn and prostitution can be seen on Facebook and Instagram. A few weeks ago, 41 US states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit against Meta. It accused the company of contributing to mental health problems including depression, anxiety and insomnia among young people through the addictive nature of its social media platforms.
On the other hand, the number of sextortion cases is on the rise. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) recently warned about this. Artificial intelligence (AI) makes manipulation easier. As technological development progresses, it becomes easier to generate media content from situations that never existed – the rapid development in AI tools has made this possible even more quickly.
In Nigeria, a country of more than 200 million people that is marked by huge social and class divisions, online scams have increased in recent years, with criminals operating from student dormitories, slums or affluent neighborhoods, according to Reuters. Nigerian fraudsters are also known as “419 fraudsters,” after the section of the national penal code that deals with fraud. Another name for Nigerian online scammers is “yahoo boys,” in reference to scam emails in which they present themselves as Nigerian princes promising people in financial trouble or excellent returns on investments.
(AKN)
