Almost 8 million WhatsApp and Instagram accounts linked to scam centers were deleted.
There are various online scams, from cryptocurrency investments to pyramid schemes.
Meta reported on October 21 that, since the beginning of the year, they have detected and interrupted nearly 8 million Facebook and Instagram accounts associated with criminal fraud centers. The operations of these networks, the company explained, used messaging, dating applications, social networks and cryptocurrencies to deceive people around the world.
“We continue to search for and block attempts by criminal groups to create accounts on our platforms,” Indian the company in its statement. As he pointed out, The detained accounts were associated with scam networks in Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, the United Arab Emirates and the Philippines.
Additionally, Meta said it took action against more than 21,000 fake pages and accounts posing as customer services to trick users into obtaining their personal information.
This joins the elimination of more than 6 million WhatsApp accounts what did this year and communicated two months ago, for detecting associations with criminal groups.
Frequent scams: from cryptocurrency fraud to false refunds
Within the framework of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Meta detailed the main scams detected in recent months to know how to detect them and avoid falling into them:
- Fake Home Remodeling and Debt Relief Services: Scammers created websites offering fictitious government benefits for seniors and spread their ads on platforms such as Facebook and Google.
- Fraudulent money recovery services: Criminal groups posed as the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), promising to recover funds lost, including in cryptocurrency scams. They used fake accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, Threads, TikTok, YouTube and X.
- Fake customer service: The criminals created pages that imitated banks, airlines or travel agencies and responded to user comments on legitimate posts to redirect them to fake chats or forms.
New protection tools in your applications
To combat scams, Meta announced a series of security updates to its platforms. On WhatsApp, automatic warnings are triggered when a user tries to share their screen during a video call with an unknown contact, a common practice among scammers to obtain confidential information.
On Messenger, it revealed that it is testing an advanced scam detection feature that alerts users to suspicious messages and allows AI to review recent chats if fraud is suspected.
In turn, on Facebook, Messenger and WhatsApp, allowed you to configure biometric access codes (fingerprint, face or PIN) to verify identity upon login.
And, in addition, on Facebook and Instagram, they began to offer the Security Review tool, which suggests actions such as changing the password. In WhatsApp, the Privacy Review feature helps decide who can add the user to groups and adjust their protection level.
With these measures, Meta seeks reduce online fraud attempts and strengthen protection for the most vulnerable usersespecially older adults, in the face of a digital environment increasingly exploited by international scammers.
According to the tech company, scammers constantly develop tactics to evade detection and rarely, if ever, target a single platform. “This makes collaboration with law enforcement and within sectors critical in our anti-scam efforts,” he said.
As part of this, it announced that it joined the National Senior Fraud Coordination Center (NEFCC), a nonprofit organization that works alongside AARP, Amazon, Capital One, Google, Microsoft and Walmart to combat scams targeting seniors.
In addition, the company continues its safety educational initiatives in different countries. In Europe, for example, started working with content creators like olive_sinhache in Spain, Amanda Lamb and mum_and_a_mic in the United Kingdom, and Mądra Babcia together with the SGH Warsaw School of Economics in Poland, to help older people recognize and avoid digital scams.
As reported by CriptoNoticias, these measures take place amid growing global actions by both platforms and government authorities to combat scams that include cryptocurrencies.