B.At the Facebook group Meta, around 50,000 users were targeted by surveillance companies who wanted to spy on them. Those affected had been informed, the group announced on Thursday.
Meta, which also includes Instagram and Whatsapp, has banned several companies from its platform. For this purpose, around 1,500 accounts were removed, through which information about users in more than 100 countries was collected.
The monitoring companies come from Israel, India and North Macedonia. An unidentified group from China also tried to spy on users. As a basis for the action against the companies, Meta points out that they violated the terms of use.
According to Facebook, the affected users live in the USA, New Zealand, Mexico, Hong Kong and Poland, among others. They were first observed and scouted. After that, the companies often tried to contact them via bogus accounts in order to bring surveillance software onto their devices.
Whatsapp sued the Israeli surveillance software specialist NSO some time ago because its “Pegasus” software had been used against users of the chat service. NSO assures that only authorities, for example for counter-terrorism, have access to the company’s tools. Most recently, the company came under further pressure after allegations that “Pegasus” had been used against human rights activists, journalists and US diplomats.
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