Arab News | Meta launches Saudi campaign to help users spot online scams

LONDON: With one of the world’s highest internet penetration rates, Saudi Arabia has become fertile ground for online scammers.

But as fraudsters intensify their efforts, so too have campaigns to help people avoid falling into their traps.

“As more of our everyday lives happen online, making sure people have the knowledge and tools to navigate those experiences safely becomes even more important,” Fares Akkad, Meta’s regional director for the Middle East and Africa, told Arab News.

“This sits within our wider work to keep scammers off our platforms.”

Meta has launched Shayek, an awareness campaign developed with the General Authority for Media Regulation, or Gmedia, to help people in Saudi Arabia recognize, avoid and report online scams.

Using culturally relevant content, trusted local voices and practical safety tools, the initiative aims to change entrenched habits and encourage users to pause before clicking, sharing or sending information.

“It comes down to one simple habit: pause and check before you click, share or send,” Akkad said.

“Scams often rely on people acting quickly, so encouraging that moment of pause before responding, clicking or sharing information can help people make more considered decisions.”

The urgency is clear. Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report found that, in phishing simulations, users took a median of 21 seconds to click a malicious link after opening an email, and a further 28 seconds to enter their details — leaving little time for a second thought.

Shayek seeks to insert a moment of caution into that timeframe, strengthening digital literacy and making verification a more natural part of online behavior.

“Being comfortable with technology doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll recognize every scam,” Akkad said. “Scammers often play on very human behaviors, like trust, familiarity or a sense of urgency, and those tactics can work regardless of someone’s age.”

Meta measures the campaign’s impact in stages, including whether people see and engage with its content, whether they pause to assess it, and whether reporting becomes more common.

“Reporting is a useful signal, because more people spotting and flagging scams shows the habit is taking hold,” Akkad said. “Over time, the real test is whether fewer people get caught out.”

The company combines awareness campaigns with technical safeguards, including two-factor authentication, security checkup and monitoring of reports about suspicious messages, advertisements and accounts.

It is also investing in AI-driven detection systems designed to identify violations more accurately, disrupt scams faster and reduce mistaken enforcement.

Meta said early tests were promising. The systems identified and mitigated about 5,000 scam attempts a day that existing review teams had not previously caught, helped reduce reports of the most impersonated celebrities by more than 80 percent, and recognized patterns linked to account takeovers and fake websites.

The tools also aim to protect businesses advertising on Meta’s platforms, which face financial losses and reputational damage from impersonation.

According to cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, 31 percent of messaging scams globally involve brand impersonation, with technology, financial services and parcel delivery among the most frequently targeted sectors.

In broader testing, Meta said AI systems designed to detect fake websites reduced views of scam advertisements and other serious violations by 7 percent.

“Scam tactics keep getting more sophisticated, so our detection has to evolve with them,” Akkad said. “We’ve been testing more advanced AI systems that can pick up patterns and signals that are hard to spot in isolation.”

“The goal is straightforward — identify more potentially harmful activity earlier and make it harder for scammers to reach people.”

But as platforms build more sophisticated defenses, scammers are turning to the same technology.

AI-enabled fraud now includes deepfake videos, voice cloning, highly personalized phishing emails and fake investment or retail platforms.

Cybersecurity firm Vector AI reported that AI scams surged by 1,210 percent in 2025, far outpacing the 195 percent growth in traditional fraud. It projected that losses could reach $40 billion by 2027.

AI-generated phishing emails now achieve click-through rates more than four times higher than those written by humans.

Meta said it had also seen a significant rise in AI-enabled scams. In March, it joined Amazon, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and other industry partners in signing the Industry Accord Against Online Scams and Fraud, a voluntary commitment to share threat intelligence, coordinate defenses and work with law enforcement against cross-border fraud networks.

The move came as Meta continued to face scrutiny over the scale of fraudulent advertising on its platforms.

Internal documents reported by Reuters indicated that the company projected about 10 percent of its 2024 revenue — roughly $16 billion — would come from advertisements for scams, illegal gambling and banned goods, although Meta said the estimate was broad and included suspicious rather than confirmed fraudulent ads.

Meta disputes allegations that it knowingly profited from fraudulent advertising. It said it removed more than 159 million scam advertisements in 2025, 92 percent of them before users reported them, and removed 10.9 million Facebook and Instagram accounts linked to criminal scam centers.

But the company’s dual role as a major advertising platform and a source of advice on scam prevention complicates its safety message.

“Protecting people from scams is something we take seriously,” Akkad said, acknowledging that despite improvements, there is a lot of work to do.

“This work is never finished. We continue to invest in advanced detection technology, stronger account security and advertiser verification, alongside tools that help people recognize suspicious activity and protect themselves.”

Meta has also built protections tailored to individual apps, reflecting the different ways scams spread.

On WhatsApp, features include warnings when users attempt to share their screen with an unknown contact, two-step verification, silenced calls from unknown numbers and additional context when an unfamiliar account sends a message or adds someone to a group.

Facebook is testing alerts for suspicious friend requests, building on existing tools such as Security Checkup, which helps users strengthen account protection.

On Instagram, safety notices can warn users about accounts suspected of impersonation or suspicious activity, while message controls aim to limit unwanted contact.

“The idea behind these tools is to give people useful context when they need it and make it easier to decide what to do next, including blocking or reporting suspicious activity,” Akkad said.

He said the partnership with Gmedia reflected a shared commitment to give users the confidence and knowledge to navigate the internet safely.

“For us, effective cooperation comes down to making digital-safety education genuinely useful and relevant to the people you’re trying to reach,” he said.

“Scammers often target multiple platforms and apps at once, which makes it harder for any single company to catch them. That’s why scam prevention is a shared responsibility, one that requires collaboration between platforms, government and everyday users.”

After all, Akkad stressed, Shayek “adds what technology alone can’t — helping people spot a scam for themselves.”