Meta cracks down on ‘Yahoo Boys’ and thousands of sextortion accounts

Meta shut down 63,000 Instagram accounts based in Nigeria that it says were engaged in financial sextortion scams and connected to what Meta calls a “loosely organized” group of cybercriminals known as the “Yahoo Boys.”

Meta has been getting serious about cracking down on sextortion scams and educating users about how to avoid them. Earlier this year, Meta said it would automatically send suspected sextortion account messages to users’ hidden requests folder. If users were already talking to a potential scam or sextortion account, it would display a safety notice prompting them to report threats to share private images. Meta said it would also make it so that potential sextortion accounts wouldn’t be able to view the “Message” button on teens’ profiles, even if they’re already connected.

Meta said that the new technical signals it’s created helped track down the network of sextortion accounts. Of the 63,000 accounts Meta said it removed, 2,500 were part of a coordinated network linked to a group of 20 people. Meta said the network mostly targeted adult men in the US, and most of their attempts were unsuccessful. After identifying the network of 2,500 accounts, Meta said it was able to find more accounts in Nigeria engaged in similar scams, leading to the rest of the accounts it removed.

Meta also removed thousands of Facebook accounts, groups, and pages based in Nigeria that gave scammers tips, fake photos to use on accounts, and scripts. Its system is now identifying and blocking any attempts by these groups to return to the site.

The company has been working on new features to warn users about potential scams. Meta said in April it was testing a new feature that detected images with nudity as well as a prompt to tell users to think twice before sending a nude image via direct message. It also let them unsend the message later on. The feature would also display a warning to recipients who try to forward the image.