By Kayode Sanni-Arewa
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has taken down another 1,600 Facebook groups tied to Yahoo Boys.
This new crackdown followed an earlier purge in July that saw the removal of 63,000 accounts associated with the scam groups, according to its Q1 2024 Adversarial Threat Report.
It also included the deletion of 7,200 assets in Nigeria, including 1,300 Facebook accounts, 200 pages, and 5,700 groups that were providing scam-related resources.
In a statement released on Thursday, Meta disclosed that these groups were involved in recruiting, organising, and training new scammers.
While Meta has been actively removing these violating accounts for years, it announced the implementation of new processes to speed up the identification and removal of such accounts.
The company explained, “Yahoo Boys are banned under Meta’s Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy — one of our strictest policies — which means we remove Yahoo Boys’ accounts engaged in this criminal activity whenever we become aware of them.