Meta Purges 1,600 Facebook Groups Linked to Yahoo Boys, Cracks Down on Sextortion Scams
By Rita UZuh
October 17, 2024
Meta, the parent company of Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, has intensified its efforts against online scammers, particularly those known as “Yahoo Boys,” by deleting 1,600 Facebook groups connected to their activities. This action comes as part of Meta’s ongoing campaign to curb fraudulent behavior on its platforms. It follows a larger purge in July when the company removed 7,200 Facebook assets linked to similar schemes.
In addition to Facebook, Meta recently announced the removal of 63,000 Instagram accounts in Nigeria tied to financial sextortion scams. These scams primarily target young people, using threats to expose intimate content in exchange for financial gain.
Meta’s latest statement emphasized that Yahoo Boys fall under its Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy, one of its strictest regulations. “Yahoo Boys are banned under Meta’s Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy, which means we remove Yahoo Boys’ accounts engaged in this criminal activity whenever we become aware of them,” Meta stated. The company also revealed new measures to identify and remove such accounts more quickly in the future.
Aside from cracking down on scammers, Meta is introducing new safety features to protect users, especially teenagers, from sextortion schemes. These features will block suspicious accounts from following teens and limit the visibility of follower lists, which are often used by scammers to blackmail victims.
The term “Yahoo Boys” originated from Nigeria in the early 2000s, named after the once-popular Yahoo email service. These scammers are the digital descendants of “419 fraudsters” who used letters and emails to deceive people into paying advance fees in exchange for false promises of wealth.
The dangers of financial sextortion scams have reached global awareness, particularly following a recent Bloomberg Businessweek exposé that linked many of these scams to Nigeria. Notably, two Nigerian brothers, Samuel and Samson Ogoshi, were sentenced to 17.5 years in a U.S. federal prison for a sextortion scam that led to a teenager’s tragic suicide.
Sextortion is a criminal act in which scammers use intimate images to extort money from victims, often teenagers and young adults. In response, Meta has announced new protections, including the prevention of screenshots or recordings of ephemeral content sent through Instagram and Messenger. They are also rolling out a global nudity protection feature that will blur explicit images in Instagram DMs and provide warnings of potential risks, a default setting for users under 18.
Meta reaffirmed its commitment to protecting its community, saying, “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.”
