Meta removed tens of thousands of Instagram accounts and Facebook groups linked to “sextortion,” a type of blackmail whereby the scammers threaten to expose sexual images of individuals if they are not paid ransoms.
“We’ve removed around 63,000 Instagram accounts in Nigeria attempting to target people with financial sextortion scams, including a coordinated network of around 2,500 accounts,” Meta said in a July 24 statement. The tech firm also removed around 1,300 Facebook accounts, 5,700 Facebook Groups, and 200 Facebook Pages, all based in Nigeria, that provided tips to conduct sextortion scams.
