Published 10:56 IST, December 21st 2019
Facebook bans hundreds of fake accounts spreading pro-Trump messages
Facebook has announced that it has banned and remover several fake accounts that were spreading false and primarily pro-Trump messages on its platform.
Facebook has taken down several fake accounts that were spreading pro-Trump messages. Facebook has commented that it noticed pages that were engaging in foreign and government interference. Their goal, according to Facebook, was to fool other users as to their true identities and their motives.
Fake accounts originated from Vietnam and Georgia
The announcement by Facebook marks the social media giant's latest attempt malicious manipulation by fake accounts. One of the fake accounts that were deleted by Facebook was traced back to US-based Epoch Media Group. The group in the past has been known to associate with controversial religious organisation Falun Gong.
The group in question repeatedly violated several of Facebook's policies including spreading false information and spamming other users. The group has been banned. In addition, Facebook has also blocked 610 accounts, 89 pages, 156 groups and 72 Instagram accounts that originated in Vietnam, these accounts according to Facebook used artificial intelligence to generate fake profile photos.
According to Facebook's head of security policy Nathaniel Gleicher, the accounts posted memes and content related to US politics. The topics the group shared about included the impeachment, conservative ideology, political candidates, elections, trade, family values and freedom of religion. These fake accounts were followed by almost 55 million users. Another major group of fake accounts originated from Georgia. These accounts were traced to an advertising agency called Panda. 39 pages and over 300 pages were removed from Facebook in relation to this.
Huge data breach
Recently, Around 267 million people were affected by a data breach that shocked Facebook. The social media behemoth released a statement on Thursday, December 19 saying that it had launched an investigation into the matter. The database was published on an online hacker forum that apparently belonged to a crime group.
The database contained personal information like IDs, phone numbers, names, etcetera. Most of the users targeted in the attack are from the United States. The database was released online by a group of four men who published the data in a downloadable file on the forum. Comparitech, a company that looks into VPNs, password managers, ID theft protection, antivirus, internet providers, network monitoring, and more has partnered with Facebook to investigate the matter.
Updated 11:20 IST, December 21st 2019