Love in the Age of Social Media: Beware of Scammers
With social media, love has taken on a new appearance. We scroll, we chat, we filter to seduce, but all this doesn't spare us from disappointments. And we're not just disappointed by the lack of genuine connections, but also by scammers who pose as charming seducers.
On the occasion of Valentine's Day, META has attempted to warn its users to spare them from a bad experience on Facebook, Instagram, and even WhatsApp. Its teams have eliminated 408,000 malicious accounts, indicating that the countries where these accounts are mostly created are Côte d'Ivoire, Benin, Cameroon, Nigeria, or Ghana. These scams aim to trap internet users residing in Western countries or other wealthy nations to extort money from them.
The scenarios to achieve this vary, such as the scammer who poses as a military personnel seeking virtual relationships on the front lines to feel less lonely. Or another case where they pose as a celebrity, like the French woman who lost over €800,000 to a fake Brad Pitt. And other examples that have succeeded in making META network subscribers pay incredible sums.
In response to these maneuvers, META has shared a practical guide that protects internet users. This guide dismantles the processes adopted by scammers, even if they are skilled in persuasion and manipulation techniques. They always advance well-constructed profiles that falsely inspire confidence.
Now, on Messenger, an intelligent alert system detects suspicious conversations, particularly when a foreign account deploys a series of romantic approaches. A call filtering mechanism is also in place on WhatsApp. This innovation, based on predictive algorithms, judges the validity of incoming contacts by examining a complex matrix of metadata: exchange history, rapidity of connections, and behavior models.
On Instagram, where identity usurpations are frequent, these devices adjust specifically to the communication modes of teenagers, who unfortunately constitute a prime target for online predators.
Fraudsters will face a new barrier: facial recognition algorithms, supported by generative adversarial networks (GAN), which automatically analyze profile images by confronting them with official databases and are even capable of detecting image alterations.
META has consolidated its defense system by relying on the expertise of several partners. Cybersecurity specialists from different countries, as well as the "Tech Against Scams" coalition, which brings together stakeholders in the cryptocurrency and dating app industries.
