India is now the world’s second most targeted country for international scams while US tops the list. Scammers use tools like AI to create convincing fake profiles, according to Meta’s Semiannual Adversarial Threat Report.
“Our investigations surfaced that Criminal Scam Syndicates most frequently targeted English-speaking users across the US, followed by users in India,” said the reports.
It also noted that Mandarin speaking audiences including those in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore were the next groups targeted, with
targeting of audiences in Japan and South Korea close behind.
Meta has publicly reported on adversarial threats since 2017, initially focusing on Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior (CIB) and subsequently expanding the scope to include espionage, surveillance-for-hire operations, and other malicious actors.
The aim of the report, according to Meta, is “to enhance the shared understanding of the threat landscape among industry peers, government bodies, and civil society, and hold threat actors accountable by shining a light on their adversarial behavior”.
Different types of Scams
A section of the report provides the information of various types of scam that surfaced in Meta’s investigation, these include —
Advance Payment Scams
Investment Scams
Gambling Scams
Romance Scams
User Support Scams
Celebrity Impersonation Scams
Government Impersonation Scams
The report noted that “generative AI continues to lower the barrier to entry for scam actors while simultaneously increasing the quality, sophistication, and scale of their operations. Despite these advances in adversarial use of AI, we continue to adapt our behavior and technical-based detections to combat these more sophisticated adversaries”.
To address criminal scam syndicates, Meta claims to have removed over 10.8 million Facebook and Instagram accounts, 6,00,000 Facebook Pages and 1,12,000 Ad accounts in 2025 for violating their policies against fraud, scams and Deceptive Practices and Dangerous Organization and Individuals
Leave a Reply