Outlook Business Desk
Meta Platforms said it removed over 159 million scam advertisements and took down around 10.9 million accounts linked to fraudulent activity across its platforms last year, as the company increased efforts to curb the growing threat of online scams.
Online scams are increasingly emerging as a major issue across social media platforms. Fraud networks often use fake advertisements, impersonation strategies and duplicated accounts to mislead users into sending money or sharing personal information, the company said.
Meta said it is increasingly using artificial intelligence (AI) systems to detect scam activity more quickly and accurately, allowing the company to spot suspicious behaviour that traditional monitoring methods may struggle to identify.
The company rolled out new anti-scam tools across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. These features are designed to alert users to suspicious behaviour and commonly used scam tactics before they accidentally share money, personal information or other sensitive details.
The company said scammers often rely on subtle language and misleading messaging that older detection tools struggle to recognise. To counter this, Meta’s artificial intelligence systems analyse multiple signals at once, including text, images and the surrounding context.
These artificial intelligence tools are designed to detect two key forms of scams: impersonation schemes and fraudulent websites. In both cases, scammers try to make users believe they are dealing with genuine individuals, brands or trusted online platforms.
In impersonation scams, fraudsters pretend to be celebrities, public figures or recognised brands to build trust with users. Fraudulent website scams, meanwhile, redirect people to fake pages that closely imitate legitimate online platforms or services.
Now, Meta is rolling out alerts on Facebook to flag potentially suspicious activity. Users may see warnings when friend requests come from recently created profiles, accounts with very few mutual connections or profiles that appear to be operating from another country.
Additionally, WhatsApp will also show clearer warnings when users link their accounts to another device, including the device’s country location. Meanwhile, Messenger will flag suspicious chats such as fake job offers or financial requests and allow users to request an artificial intelligence scam review.