Meta, the parent company of Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, has deleted another 1,600 Facebook groups linked to Yahoo Boys.
This purge, which happened last week, follows the one in July that saw 7,200 Facebook assets removed. The company also announced the recent removal of 63,000 Instagram accounts in Nigeria tied to financial sextortion scams.
On Thursday, Meta revealed that these groups attempted to organise, recruit, and train new scammers. It said, “Yahoo Boys are banned under Meta’s Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy — one of our strictest policies — which means we remove Yahoo Boys’ accounts engaged in this criminal activity whenever we become aware of them.
“While we’ve been removing violating Yahoo Boys accounts for years, we’re putting new processes in place which will allow us to identify and remove these accounts more quickly.”
In addition to targeting scammers, Meta introduced new safety features aimed at protecting users, particularly teens, from sextortion scams. These measures include blocking suspicious accounts from following teens and making it harder for scammers to view follower lists, which are often used to blackmail victims.
Yahoo boys are online fraudsters whose moniker originated from the email service, Yahoo, which became popular in Nigeria in the 2000s. These scammers are the successors of 419 fraudsters, who used to promise to help strangers get rich through letters and later emails for an advance fee.
A recent Bloomberg Businessweek exposé highlighted the rise of financial sextortion in the U.S., tracing many scams to Nigeria. Two Nigerian brothers, Samuel Ogoshi, 24, and Samson Ogoshi, 21, were recently sentenced to 17.5 years in U.S. federal prison for a sextortion scam that led to a teenager’s suicide.
Sextortion is a horrific crime where financially driven scammers target young adults and teens around the world, threatening to expose their intimate imagery if they don’t get what they want, Meta explained. The social media giant stated that soon, users won’t be able to screenshot or record ephemeral images or videos sent through Instagram DM or Messenger, providing an added layer of protection. Additionally, the company is globally rolling out a nudity protection feature in Instagram DMs, which will blur images containing nudity and warn users of associated risks. This feature will be enabled by default for teens under 18.
“We’ll continue to evolve our defenses to help protect our community from sextortion criminals. This includes helping teens and their families recognize these scams early, preventing potential scammers from reaching their targets, and working with our peers to fight these criminals across all the apps they use,” Meta added.
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