Meta Deletes Over 60,000 Instagram Accounts from Nigeria Engaged in Sextortion
Meta announced yesterday that it has shut down around 63,000 accounts in Nigeria that were involved in extortionate sexual fraud under its policy on ‘dangerous organisations and individuals’. In total, Instagram accounts and groups operated by an organisation called Yahoo Boys, which operated primarily from Nigeria, were removed.
The deleted accounts included a smaller ‘coordinated network’ of approximately 2,500 accounts linked to a group of about 20 people who operated them, Meta reported.
Sexual extortion or sexual extortion is blackmail where criminals threaten to release explicit photos of someone - real or fake - unless the victim pays money or provides sexual favours.
The social network said the scam was mostly targeting people in the United States and that the accounts were from its Instagram platform; an earlier report said the Facebook accounts had been deleted. Meta owns Instagram, Facebook and the WhatsApp messaging platform.
‘They primarily targeted adult males in the United States and used fake accounts to hide their identities,’ Meta said.
The company's investigation showed that most of the fraudsters' attempts were unsuccessful.
Although they were mostly aimed at adults, there were also attempts on minors.
Meta said it reported the cases to the US National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.
The platform said it used a combination of new technical signals designed to detect sexual extortion.
The move comes months after the FBI warned of a ‘huge increase’ in sexual extortion cases against children.
The targeted victims are mostly boys aged 14 to 17, but the FBI said any child can be a victim.
The rise in sexual extortion cases in recent years is partly due to a loosely organised group, Meta said.
In April, Meta announced that it was rolling out new tools on Instagram to protect young people and combat sexual extortion.
It also plans to include a feature that will automatically blur nude images in direct messages.