Meta says 50,000 Facebook users alerted of possible spying by private surveillance firms

• Meta has banned seven ‘surveillance-for-hire’ firms from its platforms

• The seven firms carried out a combination of reconnaissance, engagement, and exploitation

Meta Platforms Inc in late Thursday said it has alerted around 50,000 Facebook users worldwide, which the social media giant believes have been targeted by private surveillance companies.

The social media giant that owns and operates Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger said in a blog post that it had banned seven entities — Cobwebs Technologies, Cognyte, Black Cube, Blue Hawk CI, BellTroX, Cytrox, and an unknown Chinese entity — that targeted people across the internet.

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Four of the seven entities are located in Israel. One is in India, and the other one is in North Macedonia. The firms carried out a combination of surveillance, engagement, and exploitation. Some carried out all three, while others focused on one or two.

Meta said it removed around 1,500 accounts linked to the seven firms, shared the findings with security researchers, other platforms, and lawmakers, and issued Cease and Desist warnings.

Threat and action

Meta said that the companies targeted people, including journalists and human rights activists in over 100 countries, on behalf of their clients, adding that these surveillance-for-hire groups created fake accounts, befriended targets, and used hacking methods to acquire information.

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“The global surveillance-for-hire industry targets people across the internet to collect intelligence, manipulate them into revealing information and compromise their devices and accounts,” Meta’s Director of Threat Disruption, David Agranovich, and Head of Cyber Espionage Investigations, Mike Dvilyanski, wrote in the blog post.

“These companies are part of a sprawling industry that provides intrusive software tools and surveillance services indiscriminately to any customer — regardless of who they target or the human rights abuses they might enable,” they added.

Surveillance scandal

Earlier in July, news reports unveiled the first big surveillance scandal of the year, where Pegasus “spyware,” developed by Israel’s NSO Group, was used to target thousands of people, including world leaders and journalists.

While Meta is also taking legal action against NSO Group over the alleged spreading of Pegasus software via WhatsApp, the U.S. government blacklisted the company last month.

Picture Credit: BBC