Meta acts against 3.7 million scammers' accounts with Singapore police help

Meta, the social media platform, has been working with Singapore's police force to combat scammers across its platforms, Facebook and Instagram. According to the police, this collaboration has been ongoing for the past two years. In the first half of this year, Meta removed over 113,000 scam-related entities and pages. The company identified a surge in such activity during the upcoming school holidays when families are more likely to browse for travel deals.

In June, Meta took down more than 33,600 scam entities and pages, anticipating an increase in scam attempts during the school holidays. By July, the majority of the actions taken by Meta - over 3.6 million entities and pages - were found to be inactive or "shell pages", yet potentially exploitable by scammers for future use.

Daryl Poon, Meta's director of law enforcement outreach for Asia Pacific, explained that scammers operate across various platforms and countries, often exploiting the fact that no single organization sees the full picture. The partnership with Singapore's police force, Poon stated, allows Meta to identify threats that might otherwise go unnoticed.

This collaboration, Poon added, is a model they intend to expand within the region and beyond. Clara Koh, Meta's director of public policy for Southeast Asia, highlighted the alarming trend of scammers now using artificial intelligence to create large numbers of fake profiles, generate offensive content, and produce harmful code. Meta is investing in strengthening its defenses on its platforms to swiftly remove such content, particularly before it can reach unsuspecting users.