Meta has announced new measures or solutions to fight the sextortion scams on the platform. This is the fastest-growing cybercrime on social media platforms that is impacting thousands of users on Facebook and Instagram.
In the first line of defense, Meta is increasing its detection measures to highlight potential sextortion accounts. In this measure, the platform will display new elements on connection requests that highlight possible elements of concern. Check this out.
Check out the above screenshots of Instagram where you can see that new Instagram connection requests sent to teen users will include notes on how long the account has been in action, whether it’s based in their country or another country, and if you don’t have any mutual followers.
This new action can help teen users become more informed about the choices they are making on connections. This action could stop potential scammers or sextortion scammers in their tracks.
Using the same indicators, the company is also implementing new restrictions on who can see your follower list, check this out.
Here is how Meta explains it.
“Sextortion scammers often use the following and follower lists of their targets to try and blackmail them. Now, accounts we detect as showing signals of scammy behavior won’t be able to see people’s followers or following lists, removing their ability to exploit this feature.”
This could be another potential measure that can stop such things from happening. It would certainly limit the scammers.
Apart from this, they are also adding the ability to stop users from taking screenshots and screen recordings for ephemeral images or videos. Along with this, they are also extending their blur feature for detected nude images.
“This feature, which will be enabled by default for teens under 18, will blur images that we detect contain nudity when sent or received in Instagram DMs and will warn people of the risks associated with sending sensitive images.”
As you can see from the above work, this new feature will be enabled by default for teens under 18.
In addition, Meta is also expanding its partnership with NCMEC and Thorn to create new educational resources that will help teen users.
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