Facebook's parent, Meta, removed hundreds of accounts in the last year across Facebook and Instagram tied to known spyware and surveillance-for-hire vendors,Major tech companies have become one of the first lines of defense against the global proliferation of spyware and surveillance-for-hire vendors, given the companies' unique visibility into how the vendors abuse their platforms and devices.
For instance, Meta removed 130 Facebook and Instagram accounts tied to spyware vendor Candiru and 250 accounts tied to vendor Quadream that they believed were being used to test their tools. Meta also removed about 230 accounts on Facebook and Instagram linked to spyware vendor CyberGlobes that were used to scrape user data.Spyware makers also rely on other legitimate tools outside of Meta's and other companies' reach, the report notes.as a hackers-for-hire service relying on marketing tool Branch to manage and track phishing links.
"This demonstrates just how important a whole-of-society response is to tackling this growing malicious industry," the report says.exposing Spanish IT company Variston IT as a spyware maker.