Over 40 US attorney generals have signed an open letter addressed to Meta asking it to do more to protect social media user accounts against scammers.
Led by the New York attorney general Letitia James, the bipartisan coalition of 41 states has requested that Meta thoroughly review its data security measures and practices.
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The letter stated that many Meta users on Instagram and Facebook have lost access to their accounts following scams that have stolen their passwords.
This leaves their private messages, contacts and personal information at risk of being used by bad actors controlling the stolen account.
The letter also stated that the bad actors in control of these stolen accounts can often continue posting under a user’s name, leaving their online footprint vulnerable to offensive or libellous statements that are wrongly attributed to the user.
“Having your social media account taken over by a scammer can feel like having someone sneak into your home and change all of the locks,” stated James.
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By GlobalData“Social media is how millions of Americans connect with family, friends, and people throughout their communities and the world,” she said, “To have Meta fail to properly protect users from scammers trying to hijack accounts and lock rightful owners out is unacceptable.”
“I thank my fellow attorneys general for joining me to call on Meta to take commonsense user protection measures and dedicate more of their resources to respond to this threat,” she added.
Social media users are increasingly at risk of losing their accounts this way.
Between 2019 and 2023, the Office of the Attorney General for the US reported a 1000% increase in the number of complaints made by social media users whose accounts had been stolen by scammers.
Over 120 complaints were made about this issue in January 2024 alone.
The letter requests that Meta takes “common sense” steps in account safety, including a better response to user complaints about account takeovers and steps to mitigate accounts from being stolen.
The letter can be found here.
