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Facebook account takeovers are targeting people you know, turning friendship into fraud


A New Brunswick woman says her Facebook account was hijacked then used to swindle her friends out of thousands of dollars. All the while, Meta, Facebook’s parent company, did nothing to stop the crime in progress. A cybercrime expert says Canada needs regulations that force companies to respond quickly to urgent situations.

Meta — which also owns Instagram, Messenger, Threads and WhatsApp — made about $185 billion Cdn in revenue last year, a 16 per cent year-over-year increase, according to its 2023 annual report. When she was finally able to regain access to her account days later, Lowery found that her online friends had been swindled out of a combined $2,500 in the form of deposits for the items they thought they were buying. In March, a group of 41 U.S. state attorneys general demanded that Meta provide support for users after a "dramatic and persistent spike" in complaints about account takeovers, exactly what happened to Lowery.

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