Meta is testing a new feature that warns users about romance scams | Technology News
With a few hours left for Valentine’s Day, online romance scams are once again on the rise. As part of its global anti-scam awareness campaign, Meta has issued a warning that scammers might be posing as “attractive, single and successful individuals” on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
Romance scams involve scammers targeting unsuspecting people in different ways. Some of the ways fraudsters approach their victims involve sending malicious messages and emails, creating fake profiles on social media platforms and dating apps and pretending to be someone with a military or business background.
Usually, these scammers send messages to multiple people at once. If someone responds, just like in crypto romance scams, they try to build trust before asking for money or investing in some shady schemes.
Meta says this warning is currently being shown to a handful of users on Instagram. (Image Source: Meta)
To fight again romance scams, Meta says it has built a bunch of tools that can help users stay safe. The company is currently testing a new feature for Instagram that shows Safety Notices to caution users when they are chatting with someone whose account has had a history of suspicious activity.
Meta said this functionality will also be available on WhatsApp and Facebook in the coming months. On WhatsApp, users can enable ‘silence calls from unknown callers’ toggle to prevent getting voice and video calls from unknown numbers. As it turns out, the Mark Zuckerberg-owned tech giant is also flagging imposter accounts using facial recognition to see if the user’s profile picture matches against a public figures Facebook and Instagram profile.
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