Lily Hay Newman Security Mar 11, 2026 8:01 AM Meta Ramps Up Efforts to Disrupt Industrialized Scamming Meta removed 10.9 million Facebook and Instagram accounts linked to “criminal scam centers” last year, the company announced on Wednesday. Photograph: picture alliance; Getty Images Save this story Save this story With organized, industrial-scale scamming causing a multibillion-dollar crisis around the world , Meta announced new account protections on Wednesday aimed at flagging potentially suspicious activity to users as early in a scam interaction as possible. The company also shared details about a recent Thai law enforcement collaboration that resulted in 21 arrests and Meta disabling over 150,000 user accounts associated with Southeast Asian scam compounds . The disruptive action—a joint effort of the Royal Thai Police, the FBI, the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency, the Australian Federal Police, and other law enforcement agencies—focused on alleged scammers targeting victims in numerous countries, including the US and UK as well as multiple Asian and Pacific region countries. The account protections Meta debuted on Wednesday include expanding its Messenger scam detection features for more users around the world, introducing warnings about potentially suspicious activity when a user is initiating a new WhatsApp device link, and testing new Facebook alerts to flag potentially suspicious friend requests. “Transnational scam syndicates continue to exploit digital platforms and operate across multiple jurisdictions,” Gregory Kang, the deputy assistant commissioner of the Singapore Police Force, said in a statement on Wednesday. “Joint operations like this demonstrate the importance of close cooperation between law enforcement agencies and industry partners.” Mainstream social media and communication platforms are a crucial digital meeting ground where online scammers—who are often forced laborers—and victims from around the world can cross paths. Professionalized “ pig butchering ”-style investment scamming has expanded in Southeast Asia and proliferated around the world, creating more urgency than ever to block and deter fraudulent activity on consumer platforms. Meta began speaking publicly about its work focused on scam compounds at the end of 2024. That year, the company said that it had taken down more than 2 million accounts related to scam compounds. On Wednesday, the company said that in 2025 it took down 10.9 million Facebook and Instagram accounts “associated with criminal scam centers” and removed more than 159 million scam ads across all categories. Meta has increasingly come under fire for not taking enough proactive action against scams across its platforms—with Reuters reporting in December that billions of scam ads appear everyday and internal Meta estimates forecast up to 10 percent of its revenues may come from scam advertising. A company spokesperson at the time disputed the figures. Law enforcement in many regions—including Thai and Cambodian police—have carried out a spate of operations in recent months to intervene in scam compounds , make dozens of arrests, and seize funds. And the crackdowns aren’t limited to Southeast Asia. Meta said in February, for example, that it provided support for a Nigerian Police Force and UK National Crime Agency operation focused on disrupting an alleged scam center in Nigeria. Meta announced other efforts on Wednesday to combat scamming and abusive behavior on its platforms. The company said it is further expanding advertiser verification with a goal that 90 percent of ad revenue will come from verified advertisers by the end of 2026, which would be a major increase from 70 percent currently. The goal, Meta says, is for the final 10 percent to accommodate small, local businesses and other low-resource, benign entities that just want to run a few ads. The company also said that its anti-scam specialists have built AI detection systems to help flag more situations where scammers may be impersonating brands, celebrities, or other public figures. These systems are also designed to catch more “deceptive links” that could be used to fool targets into visiting malicious websites. The scamming ecosystem and industry around the world has expanded and matured to such a degree that no one platform or government can solve the problem. But experts have consistently emphasized to WIRED in recent years that Meta platforms are a key battleground where more detections and defenses could make a difference in the barrier to entry for scammers who are trying to reach new victims. As Chris Sonderby, Meta vice president and deputy general counsel, put it in a statement on Wednesday, “we will continue to invest in technology and partnerships to stay ahead of these adversaries.” You Might Also Like In your inbox: The week’s biggest tech news in perspective This popular pro-Trump X account is apparently run by a White House staffer Big Story: The five big ‘known unknowns’ of Trump’s war with Iran The system that intercepted Iran’s missiles over the UAE Listen: The Pentagon vs. “woke” Anthropic Lily Hay Newman is a senior writer at WIRED focused on information security, digital privacy, and hacking. She previously worked as a technology reporter at Slate, and was the staff writer for Future Tense, a publication and partnership between Slate, the New America Foundation, and Arizona State University. Her work ... 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