The American company Meta (Facebook) said in a report published on the company’s website, that it had revealed a network of accounts that spied on users of the social networking network Facebook, the photo service on Instagram and WhatsApp messenger.
According to experts, the monitoring was carried out by private companies that provide services for monitoring user actions. According to Meta estimates, about 50,000 people became victims of surveillance.
About 1.5 thousand accounts that were managed by seven organizations have been deleted. Spies have been targets of people from more than a hundred countries around the world. Meta did not specify how they were able to identify the spy accounts.
According to Meta, the victims of surveillance are politicians, journalists, lawyers and unknown citizens of the public environment. The report shows the Israeli Black Cube, the Indian BellTroX, the Israeli Bluehawk CI, and the European Cytrox.
Meta believes that all of these companies were engaged in hacking activities. The list also includes Cognyte, which has been accused of creating fake profiles to deceive users in order to obtain personal data.