Meta deletes 1,600 Facebook groups linked to ‘Yahoo Boys’

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has taken down another 1,600 Facebook groups tied to Yahoo Boys.

This new crackdown followed an earlier purge in July that saw the removal of 63,000 accounts associated with the scam groups, according to its Q1 2024 Adversarial Threat Report.

It also included the deletion of 7,200 assets in Nigeria, including 1,300 Facebook accounts, 200 pages, and 5,700 groups that were providing scam-related resources.

In a statement released on Thursday, Meta disclosed that these groups were involved in recruiting, organising, and training new scammers.

While Meta has been actively removing these violating accounts for years, it announced the implementation of new processes to speed up the identification and removal of such accounts.

The company explained, “Yahoo Boys are banned under Meta’s Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy — one of our strictest policies — which means we remove Yahoo Boys’ accounts engaged in this criminal activity whenever we become aware of them.

“While we’ve been removing violating Yahoo Boys accounts for years, we’re putting new processes in place which will allow us to identify and remove these accounts more quickly.”

Alongside its crackdown on scammers, Meta introduced enhanced safety features aimed at protecting users, particularly teenagers, from sextortion scams.

These measures include blocking suspicious accounts from following teens and restricting scammers from accessing follower lists used for blackmail.

Meta further described sextortion as a severe crime where scammers threaten to expose intimate imagery of young adults and teens unless their financial demands are met.

To curb this, Meta is rolling out global protections, including preventing the screenshotting or recording of ephemeral images and videos sent via Instagram DM or Messenger.

A new feature that blurs images containing nudity and warns users of the risks will also be enabled by default for users under 18.

“We’ll continue to evolve our defences 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,” Meta added, noting its ongoing efforts to educate teens and families on these threats and to work with other platforms to tackle these crimes comprehensively.