Meta reminds 50,000 users that they have become targets of "hiring surveillance" companies

According to The Verge, Facebook's parent company, Meta, has alerted 50,000 Facebook and Instagram users that their accounts are being monitored by commercial "employment surveillance" programs around the world. According to the latest news released by Meta on its news page on Thursday, these users are targets of seven entities spread across more than 100 countries.

The posts said the targets included journalists, dissidents, critics of authoritarian regimes, opposition family members and human rights activists. The surveillance was uncovered during a month-long investigation in which Meta found a number of spy groups and removed them from the platform.

"These companies are part of a vast industry that indiscriminately provides intrusive software tools and surveillance services to any customer — regardless of who they target and regardless of the human rights violations they may contribute to," wrote David Agranovich, Meta's director of threat sabotage, and Mike Dvilyanski, head of cyber espionage investigations. "The industry 'democratizes' these threats so that governmental and non-governmental groups can take advantage of them or they wouldn't have these capabilities."

A more detailed threat report released by Meta lists six of the seven companies and lists one of the entities as unknown. Four of the seven companies — Cobwebs Technologies, Cognyte, Black Cube and Bluehawk CI — are located in Israel.

In a statement provided to NPR, Black Cube described itself as a "litigation support company" that uses investigative methods that comply with local law in every jurisdiction in which it operates. Black Cube was previously employed by Harvey Weinstein to try to block the publication of a New York Times article that sparked the #MeToo movement.

U.S. Congressman Adam Schiff said in a statement: "Facebook's disclosure of its actions to disrupt and purge seven private companies that sell surveillance services to regimes that violate human rights speaks volumes about the need for more to stop this employment market." By indiscriminately monitoring journalists and dissidents, among others, these companies pose a clear threat to human rights. ”

Meta's report also mentions Israeli spyware company NSO Group, which was sued last month by Apple and Meta for selling spyware used to leak information about the iPhone and WhatsApp. On Wednesday, Google researchers unveiled details of the "zero click" vulnerability developed by NSO Group, which could hack into the target phone with just one message. The researchers say this level of offensive capability is comparable to that possessed by nation-state actors.

The company has been blacklisted by the U.S. government because it sells software used to spy on journalists around the world. A group of lawmakers, including Adam Schiff, recently called for stricter sanctions against a group of surveillance companies, including the NSO Group, freezing the company's bank accounts and banning employees from traveling to the United States, among other things.