Meta says it’s taken down 2 million accounts linked to ‘pig butchering’ scams

Meta is making progress in its combat in opposition to pig butchering scams. In an replace, the corporate stated it has taken down greater than 2 million accounts related to such scams this 12 months and that its effort to work with different firms to take down fraudsters has had some success.

Described by Meta as “some of the egregious and complex” on-line scams, pig butchering is an more and more frequent ruse by which scammers trick victims, who they typically discover on social media and relationship apps, into making crypto investments and different monetary schemes earlier than disappearing with their funds. One research, printed earlier this 12 months and Bloomberg, discovered that these scams “have probably stolen greater than $75 billion from victims world wide” since 2020.

Meta says it’s been monitoring the felony networks behind these scams for the final two years as these teams have more and more grown their geographic footprint. “This 12 months alone, we’ve taken down over two million accounts related to rip-off facilities in Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, the United Arab Emirates and the Philippines,” the corporate stated in a weblog publish. “We additionally proceed to replace behavioral and technical alerts related to these hubs to assist us scale automated detection and block malicious infrastructure and recidivist makes an attempt.”

Earlier this 12 months, Meta joined Match Group, Coinbase and others in forming to collectively combat monetary scams. In its newest replace, Meta notes that it has additionally labored with different corporations exploited by scammers. It says that OpenAI just lately tipped off the social media firm to “a newly stood up rip-off compound in Cambodia” after the AI firm caught the would-be scammers trying to translate rip-off content material.