147/69 Friday, March 13, 2026
Meta has collaborated with law enforcement agencies from 11 countries to dismantle a major scam network operating in Southeast Asia, resulting in the shutdown of more than 150,000 accounts linked to scam centers and the arrest of 21 suspects by Thai police. The operation expands on a pilot initiative launched in December 2025, which previously led to the removal of 59,000 accounts, pages, and groups, along with the issuance of six arrest warrants.
Meta stated that the criminal networks operated like full-scale businesses, using sophisticated structures designed to evade detection. In response, the company introduced several new safety tools, including suspicious account alerts on Facebook, warnings for abnormal device-linking requests on WhatsApp via QR codes, and expanded advanced scam detection on Messenger. The system can prompt users to share recent conversation messages with AI for analysis when interactions with new contacts display patterns commonly associated with scams.
In 2025, Meta reported removing more than 159 million scam advertisements and shutting down 10.9 million accounts on Facebook and Instagram linked to scam centers. The company also plans to strengthen advertiser identity verification measures to improve transparency. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom government is preparing to launch an Online Crime Centre under its 2026–2029 strategy, which will use AI to detect fraud patterns and deploy chatbots designed to engage scammers in order to collect intelligence and disrupt the infrastructure of transnational scam networks.
Source https://thehackernews.com/2026/03/meta-disables-150k-accounts-linked-to.html