Meta removed 3.64 million Facebook and Instagram shell pages after tips from Singapore police

# What happened Meta removed more than 3.64 million Facebook and Instagram pages in July after the Singapore Police Force shared information that revealed infrastructure set up for scam campaigns. The action targeted so-called shell pages — accounts and pages with little or no content created in advance to be used later by fraudsters.

# Why Singapore police information mattered Singapore police referred data that allowed Meta investigators to find networks of scam-linked assets. From January to June, those referrals led to actions against more than 113,000 entities and pages connected to fraud and scams. During follow-up investigations Meta uncovered more than five times the number of assets beyond those first flagged by the police.

# Types of scams involved Most of the related content involved investment scams. Meta also ran a separate joint operation in June focused on e-commerce scams, which targeted more than 33,600 entities ahead of Singapore's school holidays when scam activity around travel and seasonal purchases typically rises.

# What a ''shell page'' is and why platforms remove them A shell page has little or no content and is not actively used when discovered. Even without current violating content, these pages can be acquired by scammers and activated later to run fraudulent campaigns, host scam ads, or impersonate legitimate services.

# Timing and coordination Meta's July takedown of the 3.64 million shell pages followed a briefing on 22 September in which Meta outlined the company's broader anti-scam work with the Singapore Police Force. Other enforcement moves, such as the June operation targeting e-commerce scams, were coordinated to disrupt scammers ahead of predictable spikes in consumer activity.

# What the numbers show

• 3.64 million shell pages removed in July as a result of police-shared intelligence and Meta investigations.
• Over 113,000 entities and pages linked to fraud removed between January and June following police referrals.
• More than five times as many assets were identified by Meta than the number initially flagged by police.
• 65 million scam ads removed platform-wide in 2026, with most detected proactively.

# Practical implications for users and businesses If you use Facebook or Instagram for business or marketing, be aware that attackers create dormant pages to support later fraud. Keep an eye on impersonation and unusual ad content, and report suspicious pages and ads. Platforms and police-sharing arrangements can disrupt scams before widespread harm occurs, but vigilance by users remains useful.

# Bottom line A cooperation pipeline between Meta and the Singapore Police Force helped uncover and remove millions of dormant pages and thousands of scam-linked entities and ads. The actions aimed to stop scams before they launched or reached large numbers of people, with investment and e-commerce fraud among the main threats identified.