Meta Barred Seven Companies Involved in Surveillance-for-Hire Activities

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Facebook’s parent company Meta barred at least seven companies from the platform over the past year involved in surveillance-for-hire activities to disrupt an industry that’s made it increasingly easy to track people online secretly.

In its surveillance-for-hire report last year, Meta revealed it had blocked the internet infrastructure of seven different surveillance-for-hire firms that may have targeted 50,000 Facebook and Instagram users. This year, however, Meta didn’t cite a number for the targeted users.

Meta’s Director of Threat Disruption, David Agranovich, said Meta alerts targeted users on a rolling basis. So far this year, he said, Meta has notified users in 200 countries that they’ve been targeted. (Tonya Riley and Suzanne Smalley / Cyberscoop)

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