Telecom
New Instagram Campaign to Raise Awareness and Help Protect Teens from sextortion Scams
Instagram has announced measures to further protect people from sextortion scam, including hiding follower and following lists from potential sextortion scammers, preventing screenshots of certain images in DMs, and rolling out our nudity protection feature globally
Sextortion is a horrific crime, where financially-driven scammers target young adults and teens around the world, threatening to expose their intimate imagery if they don’t get what they want. Today, we’re announcing new measures in our fight against these criminals – including new safety features to further help prevent sextortion on our apps, building on protections already in place.
New safety features to disrupt sextortion
Meta is announcing a range of new safety features designed to further protect people from sextortion and make it even harder for sextortion criminals to succeed.
Now, we’re making it harder for accounts showing signals of potentially scammy behavior to request to follow teens. Depending on the strength of these signals – which include how new an account is – we’ll either block the follow request completely, or send it to a teen’s spam folder.
Sextortion scammers often use the following and follower lists of their targets to try and blackmail them. Now, accounts we detect as showing signals of scammy behavior won’t be able to see people’s follower or following lists, removing their ability to exploit this feature. These potential sextorters also won’t be able to see lists of accounts that have liked someone’s posts, photos they’ve been tagged in, or other accounts that have been tagged in their photos.
Soon, we’ll no longer allow people to use their device to directly screenshot or screen record ephemeral images or videos sent in messages. This means that if someone sends a photo or video in Instagram DM or Messenger using our ‘view once’ or ‘allow replay’ feature, they don’t need to worry about it being screenshotted or recorded in-app without their consent. We also won’t allow people to open ‘view once’ or ‘allow replay’ images or videos on Instagram web, to avoid them circumventing screenshot prevention.
We’re constantly working to improve the techniques we use to identify scammers, remove their accounts and stop them from coming back. When our experts observe patterns across sextortion attempts, like certain commonalities between scammers’ profiles, we train our technology to recognize these patterns. This allows us to quickly find and take action against sextortion accounts, and to make significant progress in detecting both new and returning scammers. We’re also sharing aspects of these patterns with the Tech Coalition’s Lantern program, so that other companies can investigate their use on their own platforms.
Finally, after first announcing the test in April, we’re now rolling out our nudity protection feature globally in Instagram DMs. This feature, which will be enabled by default for teens under 18, will blur images that we detect contain nudity when sent or received in Instagram DMs and will warn people of the risks associated with sending sensitive images. We’ve also worked with Larry Magid at ConnectSafely to develop a video for parents, available in the Meta Family Center’s Stop Sextortion page, that explains how the feature works.
This campaign and new safety features are in addition to our recent announcement of Teen Accounts, which gives tens of millions of teens built-in protections that limit who can contact them, the content they see and how much time they’re spending online. Teens under 16 aren’t able to change Teen Account settings without a parent’s permission.
With Instagram Teen Accounts, teens under 18 will be defaulted into stricter message settings, which mean they can’t be messaged by anyone they don’t follow or aren’t connected to. In the EU, we will start placing teens into Teen Accounts later this year and in the rest of the world Teen Accounts will be available from January.
Taking action against sextortion criminals
Last week, we removed around 1,600 Facebook Groups and accounts that were affiliated with Yahoo Boys, and were attempting to organize, recruit and train new scammers. This comes after we announced in July that we’d removed around 7,200 Facebook assets that were engaging in similar behavior. Yahoo Boys are banned under Meta’s Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy — one of our strictest policies — which means we remove Yahoo Boys’ accounts engaged in this criminal activity whenever we become aware of them. While we’ve been removing violating Yahoo Boys accounts for years, we’re putting new processes in place which will allow us to identify and remove these accounts more quickly.
We’ll continue to evolve our defenses to help protect our community from sextortion criminals. This includes helping teens and their families recognize these scams early, preventing potential scammers from reaching their targets, and working with our peers to fight these criminals across all the apps they use.
Nigerian Exchange Group (NGX) hosted its annual Made of Africa (MOA) 2025 Awards on Monday, February 4, 2026. The event, held during the NGX year-end celebrations, brought together regulators, listed companies, and market operators such as MTN, BUA, Dangote, Transcorp, to celebrate achievements in compliance, sustainability, and market performance.
In his opening remarks, Dr. Umaru Kwairanga, the Chairman of Nigerian Exchange Limited, said “Excellence in compliance, sustainability, and several other categories recognises the fact that capital market operators and quoted companies must be standards not only in terms of the size of their operations but also adherence to regulations and best practices of corporate social responsibilities.”
He emphasised that the awards serve as a benchmark for excellence. He noted that the 2025 honourees demonstrated significant improvements in branding, customer service, and operational standards despite a challenging economic environment in Nigeria.
Among the evening’s significant winners was MTN Nigeria, which was honoured for its commitment to corporate transparency. The technology giant received the award for Leadership in Sustainability Reporting, emerging as the winner in a category that included Seplat Energy, BUA Cement, and Transnational Corporation of Nigeria PLC.
The award recognised the brand’s adherence to both national and global reporting standards, reflecting its role in advancing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices within the Nigerian corporate space.
Tobe Okigbo, Chief Corporate Services & Sustainability Officer, MTN Nigeria, said “This recognition for Leadership in Sustainability Reporting underscores our commitment to transparency and aligning with global best practices.
“As the capital market moves toward greater accountability, MTN Nigeria remains dedicated to demonstrating resilience and faith in the Nigerian economy through comprehensive and standard-compliant reporting.”
The ceremony saw several other major players in the financial sector secure multiple accolades. Chapel Hill Denham emerged as one of the night’s most successful firms, winning in categories including Fund Manager with the Largest Listed Fund Size and Market Operator with the Highest Value of Foreign Portfolio Investment (FPI) Transactions.
Other notable winners included: Cardinal Stone Securities Limited, named Broker of the Year and Equity Trader of the Year, Dangote Cement was awarded Best Issuer in terms of Fixed Income Listings, BUA Cement PLC was recognised as the Most Compliant Listed Company, and Transnational Corporation of Nigeria (Transcorp) PLC received special recognition for Capital Market Excellence in Equity.
Mr. Jude Chiemeka, the Chief Executive Officer of Nigerian Exchange Limited, congratulated the recipients, noting that the market saw a 51% close in the All-Share Index last year, making it the second-best performing market globally. He urged winners and nominees alike to continue striving for excellence to further the aspiration of a $1 trillion Nigerian economy.
Nigeria’s broadband landscape remains anchored by 4G LTE at 52.95% market share in December 2025, with 2G holding steady at 37.37%, while 5G penetration crawls at just 3.77%, per Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) data.
4G’s dominance stems from urban smartphone migrations and MTN-Airtel infrastructure expansions, fuelling the digital economy, as 2G persists in rural areas due to feature phone reliance and a stubborn device gap.
5G growth stalls from high smartphone costs amid inflation, telco preference for 4G’s quicker returns over capital-heavy 5G rollouts, and limited mainstream apps beyond elite urban streaming in Lagos and Abuja.
Broadband subscriptions topped 112 million, lifting penetration to 51.97%—up from 42.2% in October 2024—crossing the halfway mark for the first time, though monthly gains of 2-3 million slowed mid-year amid population growth and regional disparities.
The NCC’s 70% target stays elusive, highlighting sustained urban-rural demand but underscoring needs for affordable devices, infrastructure, and use cases to accelerate high-speed access nationwide.
Nigeria’s internet subscriber base surged to 148.2 million by December 2025, achieving 68.3% penetration, even amid 50% tariff hikes and naira depreciation, according to Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) data.
MTN and Airtel dominated with 86% market share, Airtel adding 1 million subscribers in December alone, while Glo and 9mobile lagged as legacy players.
Data consumption exploded 35% to 13.25 million terabytes yearly, but Nigerians spent ₦20.87 billion daily—totalling ₦7.62 trillion ($5.58 billion)—as gigabyte prices doubled from ₦287 to ₦575.
User frustrations mounted from network failures, thousands of fibre cuts due to construction and vandalism between January and August 2025, and poor service quality despite billions in revenue. 4G LTE held 52.95% share as the workhorse, 2G clung to 37.37% in rural areas, and 5G remained a 3.77% urban luxury limited by device costs and base stations.
The NCC’s 70% broadband target fell short at 51.97%, though the ICT sector boosted Q3 GDP by ₦7.47 trillion and restored telco profits post-2024 losses.
In 2026, attention shifts to quality matching rising costs, with users urged to stay powered amid persistent “spinning wheel” woes.
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