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Gap Finders- A special investigation: Instagram Fraud

We ask why one of the worlds most valuable companies appears to be allowing fraud on a massive scale, affecting thousands of people who use its services.

Users of the social media platform META, which owns Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp, say the company comprehensively ignores them when they report that criminals have taken over their accounts, and then use them to attack their friends and families.

An initial investigation from our Senior Reporter Shari Vahl found that It took nearly three months and her intervention before Meta, acted to recover 19-year-old Alex Bosley鈥檚 account after it had been hijacked by scammers.

By that time, dozens of his followers had been duped into the same money flip scam, handing over funds and surrendering access to their Instagram accounts as part of a con that promised rapid returns on cryptocurrency.

Alex, who is a professional cyclist from Oxfordshire, said one friend lost a 拢16,000 inheritance; another surrendered 拢19,000 he had saved from after-school work at a caf茅. Between them the group was defrauded of more than 拢100,000.

Since then Shari has uncovered more victims of various scams operating on the platform with people losing money and important connections for their businesses.

As part of this special programme, we explore the gap the criminals are exploiting to do this, the impact, and how users are planning to fight back.

We'll be joined by Ax Sharma, a Security Researcher, and Technology Reporter to look at the scale of the problem.

Presenter: Nicola Beckford
Senior Reporter: Shari Vahl
Producer: Linda Walker

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