Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has escalated its efforts against online fraud by deleting 1,600 Facebook groups associated with “Yahoo Boys,” a term used for online scammers in Nigeria.
The crackdown follows a previous purge in July, which saw the removal of 7,200 Facebook assets. Additionally, Meta revealed the deletion of 63,000 Instagram accounts linked to financial sextortion scams in Nigeria.
In a statement released on Thursday, Meta explained that these groups were used to recruit and train new scammers. “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,” Meta stated.
Meta further elaborated on its commitment to cracking down on these activities: “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 the removal of scammers’ accounts, Meta has introduced new safety features to protect users, especially teens, from sextortion scams. These measures include preventing suspicious accounts from following teens and limiting access to follower lists, often exploited by scammers to blackmail victims.
Yahoo Boys, whose moniker originated from the once-popular Yahoo email service, have taken over from the notorious 419 fraudsters who promised strangers wealth in exchange for an advance fee. A recent Bloomberg Businessweek investigation exposed the growing issue of financial sextortion, with many of these scams traced back to Nigeria. Notably, two Nigerian brothers, Samuel and Samson Ogoshi, were sentenced to 17.5 years in a U.S. federal prison for a sextortion scheme that led to the suicide of a teenager.
Meta described sextortion as a “horrific crime,” where scammers demand money from young adults and teens by threatening to expose their intimate images. In response, Meta is rolling out global safety features, including a ban on screenshotting or recording ephemeral images and videos sent via Instagram DM or Messenger. The company is also introducing nudity protection features in Instagram DMs that will blur images containing nudity and issue warnings about potential risks.
“We’ll continue to evolve our defenses to help protect our community from sextortion criminals,” Meta added. “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.”
