Report uncovers 'money-flipping' Instagram scam

'Money-flipping' is a term referring to a racket in which scammers or criminals convince victims to provide them with access to their funds.

The scammers first assure the victims of the legitimacy of their operations, and promise the victims manifold returns on their funds for a share in the profit.

Then the scammers vanish with the funds, leaving the victim penniless.

A report published by ZeroFox, an online security company specializing in social media, uncovered how Instagram is being used by 'money-flipping' scammers to leech money off their victims.

These scammers are particularly targeting followers of the pages of financial institutions and banks.

ZeroFox created a machine learning algorithm to detect scam posts based on trigger words like "money" and pictures of cash, receipts etc.

It analyzed 2 million out of the 30 billion odd posts on Instagram and found 4,574 unique instances of the scam across 1,386 different accounts.

It also found that for every scam account Instagram closes, three more pop up in its place.

Facebook-owned Instagram uses a machine learning approach quite like the one used by ZeroFox.

However, it has had little success in slowing the growth of scam posts - with only one in five scam posts being taken down over a 45-day period.

80% of the scam posts detected by ZeroFox were over 45 days old, indicating that few were being detected or reported.