Facebook alerts 50,000 users targeted by cyber mercenaries as it bans seven surveillance-for-hire groups
News and information from the Advent IM team.
- by Olivia Lawlor-Blackburn
- General
Facebook has alerted around 50,000 people who the company believes were targeted by “cyber mercenaries” – private companies often hired by authoritarian states to spy on individuals.
The victims included “journalists, dissidents, critics of authoritarian regimes, [and] families of opposition and human rights activists” the company warned in a threat report published on Thursday.
The mercenaries targeting these individuals were similar to NSO Group, the Israeli spyware firm recently sanctioned by the US government, but Meta said: “NSO is only one piece of a much broader global cyber mercenary industry.”
Read via Sky News