The social media owner announced it has taken down thousands of accounts in Nigeria that were linked to financial sexual extortion scams.
LAGOS, Nigeria — Meta has removed about 63,000 Instagram accounts registered in Nigeria connected to sextortion scams, the social media company said Wednesday.that were linked to a group of about 20 people. Meta said it also removed more than 7,000 Facebook accounts, pages and groups also in Nigeria that were providing tips for conducting scams.
Sextortion is a scam in which a cybercriminal obtains and then threatens to release nude or sexually compromising photos, blackmailing victims for a ransom.The rise of sextortion scams has increased pressure on social media companies like Meta to clamp down on cybercrimes committed on their platforms, especially targeting children.
Some of the accounts taken down by Meta were also working to recruit and train others to join the scams and offered manuals on how to commit them. Meta said the majority of attempts on its platforms were unsuccessful and that they mostly targeted adults.a rapidly growing number of children in the United States have become targets, especially teenage boys — with sometimes tragic consequences.
"We're talking about kids between 10 and 17 years old, typically, but we've even seen victims as young as 7 years old. And one of the things that makes this crime so heartbreaking and difficult to detect is the victims are afraid and embarrassed," Wray said. Cybercrime is a prominent but complicated issue in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, where residents are also suffering from online scams and from the response of Nigerian police, who are often accused of rights abuses."If I can reach one person, that might be one life that is saved because of what happened to Jordan," she says.Emmanuel Akinwotu is an international correspondent for NPR. He joined NPR in 2022 from The Guardian, where he was West Africa correspondent.
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