Over 150K Meta accounts taken down in Southeast Asian scam hub crackdown

The Register reports that Meta has deactivated more than 150,000 social media accounts associated with major scam centers across Southeast Asia as part of a joint operation with international law enforcement agencies, which also led to the apprehension of 21 alleged fraudsters.

Such an operation, which comes after a similar scam hub clampdown in December, was noted by Meta Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Chris Sonderby to exhibit the effectiveness of information sharing and coordination in dismantling scam centers. Meta's announcement comes as the firm unveiled new scam detection tools in Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp as part of its ongoing anti-fraud efforts. Both WhatsApp and Signal were recently reported by Dutch intelligence and military security agencies to have been subjected to a global hacking campaign aimed at accounts belonging to military personnel, government officials, and journalists.

"Our experts and specialists in combating scams built advanced AI systems that can analyze multiple signals such as text, images, and the surrounding context; consequently this assists us in spotting a broader range of more sophisticated scam patterns faster and at scale," said Meta.