Facebook leaks grasping spy firms that besieged 50,000 people

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Meta Platforms Inc, which owns Facebook (NASDAQ: FB), has accused a half- dozen private surveillance companies of hacking or other breaches, alleging in a study released Thursday that they together targeted nearly 50,000 people across its platforms.

The company’s fight with the spy firms is part of a broader push by American tech companies, lawmakers, and President Joe Biden’s administration to blacklist purveyors of digital espionage services, including the Israeli spyware firm NSO Group, which was blacklisted earlier this month after weeks of revelations about how its technology was being used against civil society.

Meta has already filed a lawsuit against NSO in a US court.  Meta’s head of security policy Nathaniel Gleicher said the action on Thursday was aimed to show that “the surveillance-for- hire market is considerably bigger than one company.

“According to Meta’s report, it has suspended over 1,500 accounts across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, the majority of which are false.

The entities, according to Meta, targeted people in over 100 countries. Meta did not provide a full explanation of how it found the monitoring corporations, but it runs some of the world’s largest social and communications networks and boasts about its capacity to identify and remove harmful actors from its platforms.

Story by : Norvisi Mawunyegah