Meta Bans Over Two Million Scam Accounts Within a Year

Meta, which owns social media platforms including Facebook and Instagram, has used a variety of methods to combat pig butchering scams over the past two years and closed more than two million accounts related to scams in Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, the UAE, and the Philippines in a year.

Pig butchering scams manipulate victims into investing in fraudulent investment schemes by building trust with them. The scam has caused huge losses to people around the world.

Under its “Dangerous Organizations and Individuals” policy and other safety policies, Meta leveraged internal and external professionals to investigate and evaluate potential criminal organizations, flag dangerous organizations and individuals, and prohibit such people from using Meta's platforms. The flagged accounts were also monitored for attempts to circumvent restrictions.

Meta is also working with industry participants, NGOs, and law enforcement as fraudulent organizations globally exist and continue to improve with the use of technology to improve their methods of committing crimes, and attempting to evade the laws.

For example, at a summit last week, Meta, as well as International law enforcement, government officials, NGOs, and technology companies discussed how to tackle online criminal scam syndicates. Meta also managed to stop the activities of a syndicate in Cambodia, with the information shared by OpenAI.

Police Major General Teeradej Thumsutee, Commander of the Investigation Division of the Metropolitan Police Bureau in Thailand, said, “The Royal Thai Police has been working with Meta on disrupting criminal scam centers for over two years. We’ve been able to share information so they can investigate and take action against the bad guys and help us hold the criminal syndicates behind these scam centers accountable.”

To combat fraud, Meta is also introducing new products and services to protect App usersFor example, Messenger and Instagram DMs present potential risk alerts to users.

Meta's social media platforms have huge user base on the world, which also breeds crimes. A lot of investment scam victims were cheated by fake investment advertisements on social media.