Facebook closes hundreds of accounts related to private surveillance companies

Seven entities have been identified and about 50,000 Internet users, whose Meta Group believes that they have been part of their targets, have been alerted. Among them, political opponents, lawyers, human rights activists or doctors.

by

The cat and mouse game continues between large digital companies and the private surveillance sector. The Meta Group (formerly Facebook) announced, Thursday, December 16 , having taken measures against several companies leading intelligence and espionage activities on behalf of customers, sometimes suspected of being state. A total of seven entities – Cobwebs Technologies, Cognyte, Black Cube, Bluehawk Ci, Belltrox, Cytrox, and an unidentified actor but operating from China – have been identified by Facebook, and about 1,500 accounts related to these companies have been disabled , announced the Californian group.

About 50,000 people targeted by these companies and their customers were warned by Meta, which explains, In a report published Thursday evening , that some victims of these surveillance operations were journalists, lawyers and Human rights activists:

“If these cybermencers often affirm that their surveillance services and software are designed to combat crime and terrorism, our survey shows that they are actually regularly used to target journalists, dissidents, authoritarian critics, Families of opponents and human rights activists around the world. “

Facebook regularly publishes investigative reports on misconformation and political manipulation operations carried out by certain actors on its platforms, but here, is more rarely The surveillance. Result of several months of investigation, this report also allowed META to identify espionage activities based on the services of other large digital companies and to prevent these companies, whose names have not been disclosed.

Victims around the world

The Modus Operandi of the companies concerned, Israel, China, India and North Macedonia, varies from one company to another. All used false accounts on Facebook and other platforms to collect information about their targets, ranging up to trap their victims to extract confidential data. Some of these companies also marketed spyware and sent their tie-tie targets to install a snare on their phone, while others were trying to hack certain accounts with phishing links.

The victims identified are distributed around the world: according to Meta, Belltrox has for example targeted doctors, lawyers, political activists and clergy members, in countries as diverse as Australia, Angola, Arabia Saudi and Iceland. The Cytrox Inquiry has, it made it possible to discover targets in many countries, including Egypt and Armenia. “What we see is that targeting is indiscriminate,” says Nathaniel Gleicher, Head of Meta Security Policy.

You have 40.63% of this article to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.

/Media reports.