Meta Blocks Thousands Of Scam Facebook Accounts Targeting Indians

Social media giant Meta said it blocked access to thousands of Facebook pages and accounts that scammed Indian users in March. 

In total, Meta removed more than 23,000 Facebook pages and accounts that indulged in scam activities in both India and Brazil. “In March, we removed multiple clusters of scam activity totalling over 23,000 Facebook Pages and accounts that primarily targeted people in Brazil and India,” said Meta in a blog post. 

The social media juggernaut said that the “scam” Facebook accounts used deepfakes and other techniques to “falsely depict” popular personal finance content creators, cricket players and business figures endorsing scam investment apps and gambling websites. 

The company said that these scammers redirected victims to messaging apps for “investment advice” or a fake website, which mimicked the Google Play Store, to “download scam gambling apps”.

“We also continue to look for and block attempts by criminal syndicate-run scam centres to create accounts on our platforms… The criminal organisations behind these financial scams target people globally through messaging, dating apps, social media, crypto and other apps,” said Meta in the blog post. 

Elaborating on its efforts to clamp down on online fraud, Meta said that its messaging app WhatsApp partnered with the telecommunications department (DoT) in March this year to educate users on identifying and reporting online scams and spam via workshops for DoT officials, sanchar mitras, telcos, and field units. 

Here are the other steps that Meta claims to have taken to curb online scams on its platforms:

• Partnership with the consumer affairs department to offer digital literacy initiatives under the government’s “Jago Grahak Jago” program
• A collaboration with the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C) to train law enforcement agencies in skills to address online scams and frauds. These training programmes have so far been conducted in seven states, including Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Odisha and Rajasthan
• Unveiling the Llama Defenders Program, which aims to help developers access a variety of open, early-access, and closed AI solutions to address fraud, scams and phishing attempts

The social media juggernaut’s crackdown comes at a time when scamsters are using emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) to lure victims, breach security systems and exploit vulnerabilities. 

In March this year, various social media platforms and industry stakeholders, in their recommendations to the IT ministry, called for mandatory AI labelling standards and grievance redressal mechanisms to crack the whip on deepfakes. They also flagged the lack of a standard definition for deepfakes and raised concerns over the growing misuse of deepfakes for perpetrating scams. 

This piles on the growing number of digital frauds in the country. Earlier this year, minister of state (MoS) for finance Pankaj Chaudhary informed the Parliament that Indians lost INR 107.21 Cr to cyber frauds in the first nine months of the financial year 2024-25 (FY25).