Meta deletes 63K sextortion scam accounts from Instagram, Facebook

Meta have said that it has deleted more than 63,000 sextortion scam accounts from Instagram, as well as another 2500 from Facebook – all originating from Nigeria and mostly targeting men and even some children in the US.

The latest social media house cleaning is part of a strategic campaign launched by Meta in recent years to combat financial extortion scams run by a network of cybercriminals located in Nigeria known as the ‘Yahoo Boys.’

In total, Meta said it removed 63,000 Instagram accounts, as well second set of 7,200 assets on Facebook run by the Yahoo Boys – all based in Nigeria.

The notorious Yahoo Boys criminal outfit is known to engage in a variety of online phishing scams, from posing as Nigerian princes offering investment opportunities to the infamous “no fee advance” money transfer fraud known as the "419 scam" - named for the section of the national penal code that deals with fraud.

Meta said the group had already been banned under its ‘Dangerous Organizations and Individuals’ policy but decided to announce the removals to help raise public awareness.

Sextortion can be described as a social engineering scam where a victim, usually male, is befriended by a female scammer, convinced to send sexually explicit images or videos of themselves to the fake persona, who then threatens to release the lewd material if the victim does not pay up.

Because of Nigeria’s struggling economy, online scams have only grown more prevalent, taking place in university dorms, shanty towns, and even affluent neighborhoods, experts say.

Scammers keep evolving

“Financial sextortion is a horrific crime that can have devastating consequences,” Meta said in Wednesday’s announcement.

“Our teams have deep experience in fighting this crime and work closely with experts to recognize the tactics scammers use, understand how they evolve, and develop effective ways to help stop them,” the tech company said.

The 1,300 Facebook accounts, 200 Facebook Pages, and 5,700 Facebook Groups were discovered trying to organize, recruit, and train new scammers, the Zuckerberg-run company said.

"Their efforts included offering to sell scripts and guides to use when scamming people, and sharing links to collections of photos to use when populating fake accounts," it said.

The deleted Instagram accounts were also said to include a coordinated network of roughly 2,500 accounts linked to a group of about 20 individuals.

Since the latest removal campaign, Meta said the criminal groups have already been found trying to create new fake accounts, which once identified, are then automatically blocked by its systems.

Meta also reminds users that scammers don’t limit themselves to just one platform and often target their victims across different apps, often moving their conversations from one app to another.

Enacting safeguards for children

These particular scams had been mostly targeting adult males in the US, albeit, unsuccessfully – but had also been seen going after US minors.

“Having a personal intimate image shared with others can be devastating, especially for young people,” Meta said.

Meta said it reports any attempts to the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, also sharing the information through its funded Tech Coalition’s Lantern program – a cross-platform signal-sharing program dedicated to protecting children from online grooming and sextortion by enforcing child safety policies.

“Children are vulnerable wherever they congregate online. Even media content specifically made for kids can seem innocuous on the outside but contain subtle undertones of grooming and other inappropriate behaviors,” said former insider threat, threat actor, and Cybernews contributor Jesse William McGraw.

Earlier this year, the US Surgeon General put out a warning to parents that the internet was no place for kids aged 13 and under, with Pew research reports showing almost 50% of teens have been bullied, threatened, or harassed online.

As part of safety measures enacted in April to combat sextortion attempts against children, Meta installed default account settings for those 16 and younger that block messages from unknown users and engage safety pop-up notices reminding them to be cautious.

Meta’s pop-up safety notifications also direct younger users to resources, such as Stop Sextortion Hub, Crisis support helplines, StopNCII.org, including the Take It Down site.

"This is an adversarial space where criminals evolve to evade our ever-improving defenses, the company pointed out.

"We will continue to focus on understanding how they operate so we can stay one step ahead, and will continue our vital cooperation with child safety experts, law enforcement, and the tech industry to help disrupt these criminals across all the platforms they use," Meta said.