Posted on December 6, 2019 at 1:54 PM
Facebook vs Chinese in Second Malware Lawsuit This Year
Facebook sues ILikeAd Media International Company, along with two of its founders for using Facebook ads in a bid to trick users into downloading malware.
Facebook is filing its second Lawsuit this year, ILikeAd Media International Company based in Hong Kong, along with its founders, Chen Xiao Cong and Huang Tao have been accused of abusing Facebook’s ad platform. It is claimed that ILikeAd’s founders have been luring Facebook users into downloading and installing malware.
Facebook filed the lawsuit against the accused earlier today and stated that ILikeAd had been using a technique known as “celeb bait” where they used images of celebrities to promote their advertisements in a bid to get users to click the ad.
Once the user had clicked on the ad, malware would be installed onto the victim’s computer and their Facebook accounts would become compromised, by enabling to malware software to place new adds on the victim’s profile without their consent and sometimes even without knowledge.
Chen Xiao Cong and Huang Tao were also accused of using a technique known as “clocking”. Clocking is a way of hiding the adverts’ real destination URL. Advertisers would use Facebook’s platform as the destination of the ad, however, when a user clicked on the ad they would be redirected to a third party website, usually containing malicious content.
Today Facebook’s legal team made a statement proclaiming the individuals that use cloaking schemes are aware of what they are doing and are well organized when implementing their crimes. The criminal’s sophistication makes them very difficult to detect and hold accountable, this is the reason why more of these criminal organizations haven’t been bought to justice.
The victims of this malware scandal have been refunded by Facebook. The compromised account holders were aided by Facebook in securing their accounts. This isn’t the first time that Facebook has bought a lawsuit against false advertisers. Only a few months back, in August Facebook sued LionMobi and JediMobi, two China-based Android app developers, claiming they too were fraudulently running ads on the platform in a bid to increase revenues.
