Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram, has removed 63,000 accounts connected to ‘Yahoo Boys’ targeting users in the United States.
These accounts were involved in financial sextortion scams and blackmail scripts. A smaller network of 2,500 accounts primarily targeted adult men in the US using fake identities.
Meta’s advanced technical signals and investigations identified and disabled these accounts, enhancing automated detection systems.
The company noted that ‘Yahoo Boys’, cybercriminals mainly operating from Nigeria, are responsible for these scams. Alongside the account removals, Meta also shut down Facebook assets used to recruit and train new scammers.
Additionally, Meta was fined $220 million by Nigeria’s Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) for violating consumers’ rights and data privacy.
The fine resulted from a three-year investigation revealing Meta’s compulsory data privacy terms for Nigerian users and subsequent data sharing across platforms, which breached Nigeria’s Data Protection Act.
(Punch)