Meta company, which owns applications such as Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram, announced that it has banned seven tracking companies to prevent them from targeting users on their platforms.
According to a new report by Meta, approximately 50 thousand users may receive “malicious activity” warnings.
The company accused monitoring companies of collecting information through activities such as creating fake accounts, befriending the target audience through apps, following each other and hacking.
Stating that these companies especially target journalists and human rights activists, Meta announced in its report that 1,500 accounts that were monitoring WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook as a result of months of research were suspended.
According to Meta, these companies targeted thousands of people living in more than 100 countries around the world and sought to gather information for their various customers.
At the beginning of this year, it was revealed that Pegasus spyware targeted thousands of people by spreading the software over Whatsapp; Facebook has announced that it will initiate legal proceedings against it. The US government also blacklisted Pegasus’ owner NSO Group, accusing it of targeting individuals on behalf of foreign governments.
“The monitoring and tracking industry is much larger than a company,” said Nathaniel Gleicher, head of metasecurity policy, at the presentation of the new report.
Among the companies that Meta has announced by name, there is a company called Black Cube from Israel. The company was hired by Harvey Weinstein to spy on women who accused him of sexual misconduct.
Making a statement to Reuters on the subject, Black Cube denied the allegations of “hacking or monitoring illegal activity”; He argued that “its activities are in compliance with local laws”.
According to Meta’s statement, users who are the target of monitoring activities of banned companies will automatically receive a “malicious activity” warning in the coming days without giving details.