Meta Removes Over 63,000 “Sextortion” Accounts

Bloomberg News reports:

Meta Platforms Inc. removed 63,000 Instagram accounts in Nigeria linked to scammers who were using its social media services to blackmail targets after soliciting intimate photos, the company said Wednesday. Meta, which also owns Facebook and WhatsApp, added that it had deleted thousands of additional Facebook accounts, pages and groups that were sharing scripts on how to blackmail and sexually extort users.

The mass removal took place at the end of May — six weeks after a Bloomberg Businessweek story on the rapid rise of financial sextortion in the US. The crime involves scammers posing as teenage girls on Instagram or Snap Inc.’s Snapchat to coerce their targets into sending nude photos. Those explicit images are then used to blackmail the targets, with the perpetrators threatening to forward the images to friends and family.

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Six weeks after my ⁦@BW⁩ cover story on sextortion scams driving teens to suicide, ⁦@Meta⁩ carried out a mass purge.

Today, it announced it’s removed 63,000 () fake accounts linked to sextortion scammers in Nigeria.

Holy cow; 63,000.
https://t.co/h0N3lIk600

— Olivia Carville (@livcarville) July 24, 2024