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HomeNewsCambodiaMeta blocks over 2M accounts linked to ‘pig butchering’ scams this year

Meta blocks over 2M accounts linked to ‘pig butchering’ scams this year

A recent update by Facebook parent company Meta indicates that the company has taken down some 2 million accounts linked to ‘pig butchering’ scams this year alone.

The scams have become prevalent, with the tech giant now focusing its efforts on Southeast Asian operations, with particular focus on countries such as Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and the Philippines. Interestingly, the United Arab Emirates has also been a concentration of the scam centers.

The company notes that it focuses its account closure based upon its Dangerous Organizations and Individuals Policy (DOI) – based on its ‘internal subject matter expertise and insights from external stakeholders’.

‘Once designated as DOIs, the entities are banned from our platform and subject to a wide range of enforcement tools,’ indicated the company in a recent release.

Aside from utilizing its investigative teams, the group notes that ‘We also continue to update behavioral and technical signals associated with these hubs to help us scale automated detection and block malicious infrastructure and recidivist attempts.’.

Meta has linked up with various law enforcement groups, such as the Royal Thai Police, to further its efforts in scam crackdowns in the region.

The group cites a recent collaboration with ‘industry peers’ to prevent criminal activity, focused on a scam compound in Cambodia ‘attempting to target people in Japanese and Chinese languages’. This was detected via information shared by OpenAI, ‘who detected and disrupted the actors’ efforts to use their tools to generate and translate the scammers’ content’.

Scam operations are continuously being detected globally, oftentimes linked to areas which provide some form of legalized online gaming or online gaming licensing.

But, aside from Meta’s efforts, the jurisdictions themselves are aiming to wipe out the bad actors.

The Philippines, for example, has moved swiftly to minimize malicious effects from offshore gaming operations (licensed or unlicensed) which have exploited their position to conduct other illicit operations. Recent raids and arrests are testament to the crackdown efforts, with all offshore gaming operations to be banned by year-end.

However, as authorities try to break scam rings, which oftentimes operate multi-nationally, those behind them have merely shifted jurisdictions, spreading their businesses through less-controlled areas such as the Golden Triangle.

Kelsey Wilhelm
Kelsey Wilhelmhttps://agbrief.com
Kelsey Wilhelm is a broadcast, print journalist and editor based in Asia for over 15 years. Focused on content creation, management, cross-cultural exchange and interviews for multi-lingual productions. Writing focus on gaming, business, politics, culture and heritage, events and celebrities, subcultures, music, film, art and fashion. Some of Kelsey's specialties are: editing, writing, copy creation, multi-lingual content production, cross-cultural exchange, content creation and management for Asian markets.

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