Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, has launched legal action against ….phishing attacks. Well, the bad actors who allegedly impersonated Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp to conduct phishing scams.
In California, Meta filed a federal lawsuit to disrupt phishing attacks designed to deceive people into sharing their login credentials on fake login pages for Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.
This phishing scheme in question involved the creation of more than 39,000 websites impersonating the login pages of Meta’s four platforms. On these websites, people were prompted to enter their usernames and passwords.
“Reports of phishing attacks have been on the rise across the industry and we are taking this action to uncover the identities of the people behind the attack and stop their harmful conduct,” Meta says in a blog post announcing the legal action.
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According to Meta, the accused used a relay service to redirect internet traffic to the phishing websites in a way that obscured their attack infrastructure. This enabled them to conceal the true location of the phishing websites, and the identities of their online hosting providers as well as themselves, Meta said.
Meta says the attacks started in March 2021, when the volume then increased. It was at this time Meta said it worked with the relay service to suspend thousands of URLs to the phishing websites.
“This lawsuit is one more step in our ongoing efforts to protect people’s safety and privacy, send a clear message to those trying to abuse our platform and increase accountability of those who abuse technology,” it says.
“We will also continue to collaborate with online hosting and service providers to identify and disrupt phishing attacks as they occur.”
In 2019, Instagram introduced a tool to help combat phishing attacks, which lets you verify that the emails you receive are actually from Instagram.