Meta said today that it has closed 63,000 Instagram accounts in Nigeria as part of the Facebook parent company’s crackdown on financial sextortion carried out by cybercriminals popularly called “Yahoo boys.”
Meta, owners of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp said the crackdown on financial sextortion scams originating from Nigeria, targeting cybercriminals known as “Yahoo boys.” The announcement follows Meta’s Q1 2024 Adversarial Threat Report and details the disruption of two sets of accounts involved in these illicit activities.
In addition to Instagram accounts, Meta also removed around 7,200 assets from Facebook, including 1,300 Facebook accounts, 200 Facebook Pages, and 5,700 Facebook Groups. These assets were found to be sharing tips for conducting scams, selling scripts and guides, and providing links to collections of photos for fake accounts.
Meta.
Yahoo boys: criminals continuously evolve to evade detection, Meta says
“Financial sextortion is a horrific crime that can have devastating consequences. Our teams have deep experience in fighting this crime and work closely with experts to recognize the tactics scammers use, understand how they evolve and develop effective ways to help stop them. Like many crimes, financial sextortion crosses borders, and over recent years there’s been a growing trend of scammers — largely driven by cybercriminals known as Yahoo Boys — targeting people across the internet, both with these and other types of scams. We’ve banned Yahoo Boys 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,” said Meta.
Meta’s statement reported the removal of approximately 63,000 Instagram accounts in Nigeria. These accounts were primarily targeting adult men in the United States, using fake profiles to mask their identities. A smaller coordinated network of about 2,500 accounts was linked to a group of around 20 individuals.
Meta’s investigation, the company says revealed that while the majority of these scammers’ attempts were unsuccessful and primarily targeted adults, some did attempt to target minors. These accounts were reported to the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Meta also shares relevant information with other tech companies through the Tech Coalition’s Lantern programme to help combat these activities across platforms.
In addition to Instagram accounts, Meta also removed around 7,200 assets from Facebook, including 1,300 Facebook accounts, 200 Facebook Pages, and 5,700 Facebook Groups. These assets were found to be sharing tips for conducting scams, selling scripts and guides, and providing links to collections of photos for fake accounts.
Meta’s enforcement systems have been strengthened to automatically block attempts by these groups to return. The new tactics observed during the investigation have further improved Meta’s ability to detect accounts, Groups, and Pages engaging in such activities.
Meta’s efforts extend beyond these disruptions. The tech company says it would continue to support law enforcement in “investigating and prosecuting these crimes, including by responding to valid legal requests for information and by alerting them when we become aware of someone at risk of imminent harm, in accordance with our terms of service and applicable law.”
Meta says it also funds and supports NCMEC and the International Justice Mission through Project Boost, a programme that trains law enforcement agencies worldwide in handling NCMEC reports.
To help people recognise and avoid these scams, Meta has implemented stricter message settings for teens under 16 (under 18 in certain countries), preventing them from being messaged by anyone they are not connected to. They also show Safety Notices to encourage caution.
Meta recently developed new signals to identify accounts potentially engaging in sextortion and has started testing an on-device nudity protection feature on Instagram DMs. This feature blurs images detected as containing nudity, encourages caution, and directs users to safety tips and resources, including NCMEC’s Take It Down platform.
Meta acknowledges that this is an adversarial space where criminals continuously evolve to evade detection. The company says it remains committed to understanding these tactics to stay ahead and will continue cooperating with child safety experts, law enforcement, and the tech industry to disrupt these criminals across all platforms.
Financial sextortion is a form of online blackmail where perpetrators threaten to release explicit images or videos of their victims unless they are paid a ransom. This crime often begins with scammers befriending individuals online, gaining their trust, and convincing them to share intimate content. Once the content is shared, the scammers demand money to prevent its public release.
The term “Yahoo Boys” is a colloquialism in Nigeria referring to individuals who engage in internet fraud. The name originates from the early days of email scams, where fraudsters would use Yahoo Mail to send fake business proposals or inheritance claims.
This crackdown by Meta comes just days after the Nigerian government, through the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), slammed a $220 million fine on the company. The FCCPC has been scrutinizing Meta since 2021 over data protection infractions against their Nigerian users, according to the Nigerian competition watchdog.
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