Meta has revealed how their team have worked to address and recognise tactics that sextortion scammers are using across their platforms, demonstrating the global scale of sextortion scammers as they work across the world to scam individuals. In their latest press release, they announced how they have stopped a series of criminal networks responsible for thousands of sextortion accounts.
Account Removals
The latest information explores how Meta is targeting and removing sextortion scammers on their platforms, Facebook and Instagram, after previously announcing new tools to help protect their users from sextortion and intimate image abuse.
Around 63,000 accounts that were engaging in financial sextortion scams have now been removed from Instagram, alongside Meta identifying and removing a sextortion gang with a network of around 2,500 accounts. Shockingly, those 2,500 accounts were linked back ‘to a group of around 20 individuals’, demonstrating the extent of the coordinated effort and organisation behind these criminal activities.
These coordinated gangs were found to predominantly target adult men across the United States of America, although Meta notes that many of these sextortion attempts were unsuccessful.
Preventing Sextortion Attempts
Alongside the removal of sextortion accounts across Facebook and Instagram, Meta has also removed information being provided across Facebook groups about how to conduct sextortion scams. As part of their work, Meta removed ‘7,200 assets, including 1,300 Facebook accounts, 200 Facebook Pages and 5,700 Facebook Groups’ that included information about how to scam people with fake images, scripts and guides.
To ensure these accounts and groups are unable to return, Meta has revealed how they have developed systems capable of identifying and automatically blocking these groups from being remade and are continuing to strengthen their systems to detect and block additional groups and pages.
Using Technology to Prevent Sextortion
This latest announcement follows Meta's reveal of new tools being tested to prevent sextortion and intimate image abuse on Instagram. The updates, aimed at protecting both young people and adults, make it harder for potential scammers and criminals to target individuals by automatically placing message requests from suspicious accounts into the recipient’s hidden requests folder without notifying them.
Specific protections for teenagers were also introduced, including restrictions on messaging from potential sextortion accounts and hiding teenagers' accounts from individual followers and those they follow. Making it more difficult for suspicious accounts to locate teenagers in search results.
What is Sextortion?
Sextortion, also known as webcam blackmail, refers to when intimate images and videos are recorded and used for financial exploitation and coercion, and on the Revenge Porn Helpline, cases of sextortion have continued to grow every year since 2021, making up 34% of reports received in 2023.
Sextortion attempts often begin with individuals meeting on social media or dating sites and forming a relationship through conversation. The blackmailer gains the victim's trust and persuades them to send intimate images or videos, or secretly records sexual content. These images and videos are then used to extort money or more explicit content. Sextortion can be carried out by individuals or organised criminal gangs overseas
Support for Sextortion
The Revenge Porn Helpline can provide support for any adult who has been affected by sextortion or other forms of intimate image abuse in the UK. The Helpline operates Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm, and can be contacted by phone, email, or anonymous methods.
