Meta deletes 63,000 Instagram 'sextortion' accounts from Nigeria

Instagram logo on smartphone screens. [AFP]

Meta on Wednesday said it has removed 63,000 Instagram accounts linked to sextortion scams from Nigeria, days after authorities in the West African country slapped a $220 million fine on the company.

The deleted accounts included a network of 2,500 profiles traced to a group of 20 people.

Some 1,300 Facebook accounts, 200 Facebook Pages and 5,700 Facebook Groups originating from the country were also removed for "providing tips for conducting scams".

Gangs run sextortion scams by pretending to be members of the opposite sex and persuading people to provide explicit images of themselves and then threatening to release them to the public unless their victims send them money.

"They targeted primarily adult men in the US and used fake accounts to mask their identities," Meta said in a statement.

It blamed "Yahoo Boys", a Nigerian slang for internet fraudsters, for the scam accounts.

The social media giant explained that while the majority of the attempts by scammers were unsuccessful and mostly focused on adult victims, they have also targeted minors.

A Homeland Security Investigation between October 2021 and March 2023 received 13,000 reports of financial sextortion involving 12,600 minors, mostly boys, in the United States.

The scams triggered at least 20 suicides, according to the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

"Offenders who engage in financially motivated sextortion are often located outside the United States-primarily in west African countries such as Nigeria and Ivory Coast, or Southeast Asian countries such as the Philippines," FBI said in a statement in January.

To combat the rising spate of the crime, Meta announced in April that it was testing an AI-powered "nudity protection" feature in Instagram direct messages to protect teenagers.

Two men were arrested in Nigeria the same month for trying to extort an Australian teenager by threatening to release "personal photos of the boy" if he did not pay them 500 Australian dollars ($330).

Australian police said the boy had killed himself after being threatened by the suspects in the alleged "sextortion" scam.

Meta said it is also working with law enforcement agencies in the investigation and prosecution of the alleged crimes.

The clampdown on the scam accounts came days after Nigerian authorities fined the Facebook parent company for "multiple and repeated" data violations.

The country's Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) on Friday accused Meta of violating the country's data protection and consumer rights laws on Facebook and WhatsApp.