Instagram blocks 63,000 accounts that are part of Nigerian sextortion schemes.

According to the BBC, Instagram owner Meta said on Tuesday that it had blocked hundreds of Nigerian accounts for having connections to sextortion schemes.

These con artists typically create false personas, especially those of young girls, to entice their victims to give them explicit photos, which they then utilize as leverage to demand money from them.

Psychological harm results from sextortion; victims have been known to take their own lives as a result of pressure from con artists and social disgrace.

About 63,000 accounts that attempted to participate in these frauds were deleted, according to a blog post published by Meta on Wednesday. “Financial sextortion is a horrific offense that can have devastating effects,” the statement said.

Moreover, 5,700 Facebook groups that scammers used to spread knowledge about how to con people were shut down by Meta. The public has consistently been advised to exercise caution by law enforcement authorities and experts due to the rising number of sextortion incidents on social media platforms.

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Murray Dowey, a 16-year-old from Dunblane, committed suicide in May after falling prey to these con artists. Additionally, according to the BBC, they discovered sextortion manuals for sale on social media.

Sextortion con artists frequently take on the persona of possible romantic partners and request nude pictures from their victims in return for getting such images themselves. The con artists demand money as soon as they receive the photos to keep them from being uploaded online.

Meta was compelled to disclose that the account it had targeted is associated with a sizable gang of Nigerian hackers known as the “Yahoo Boys,” who are on the company’s blacklist of hazardous persons and organizations.

Meta employs several measures to stop sextortion, including the ability for users to report suspect connections and silence the discussion when they see photographs of themselves in the nude.

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