In a report released Thursday, Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc accused a half-dozen private monitoring companies of hacking or other crimes, alleging that they together targeted around 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. According to Reuters, 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, the company has suspended almost 1,500 accounts across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, the majority of which are fake. The entities allegedly targeted people in over 100 countries, according to Meta.
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