Meta reveals major crackdown on organized crime scams

Date:
Fri, 22 Nov 2024 17:01:00 +0000

Description:
Facebook is going after 'pig butchering' scams, with two million accounts already taken down.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Facebook
has removed more than two million accounts from its platform The accounts were engaged in so-called "pig butchering" scams The majority of the victims were in Asian markets

In an effort to crack down on organized crime on its platform, Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta has taken down more than two million scam accounts.

The company revealed the news in a blog post , outlining how the bulk of
these accounts were used in so-called pig butchering scams.

Pig butchering is a type of scam in which the scammer stuffs the pig and prepares it for slaughter. In this context, stuffing the pig means tricking the victim into giving away as much money as possible, for as long as possible, before the scam is revealed and the gig is up. Asia-Pacific hotbed

Such scams are usually done via social engineering, on platforms such as Facebook. The scammers would create fake accounts of (mostly) young, attractive females, and engage in seemingly benign conversation with
potential victims. At some point, the scammers would introduce an amazing investment opportunity or platform which, in reality, is not real and is maintained by the crooks.

They would invite the victim to invest together, in preparation of a new life spent together. The victim would give money through an app, and would be
shown that investment growing over time. At this point, however, the money is already gone, and is nothing more than numbers on a screen. The scammer would try to keep the ruse going for as long as possible, getting the victim to spend as much as they can.

When, at some point, the victim tries to withdraw the money (or realizes something is amiss), they will see that its not possible.

In some cases, the fraudsters would take it a bit further, impersonating tech support from the investment platform, and telling the victim to pay a withdrawal fee, or something similar - a final attempt at extracting as much value from the victim as they can.

Meta says that the majority of the scam centers were located in Asia-Pacific, particularly Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and more recently, the UAE. The
victims, however, are scattered all over the globe. The campaign to crack
down on these scams is a joint effort, which included many major cryptocurrency exchanges, tech companies such as OpenAI, and law enforcement organizations.

"Every day, criminals target people across the world through text messaging, dating apps, social media and email in so-called pig-butchering and other schemes that try to con them into scam investments," the company's blog psot noted.

"We hope that sharing our insights will help inform our industrys defenses so we can collectively help protect people from criminal scammers." You might also like These are the most damaging scams around, according to Google so
be on your guard Here's a list of the best firewalls today These are the best endpoint protection tools right now



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/meta-reveals-major-crackdown-on-organiz ed-crime-scams


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