NEW DELHI: Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp users, there are apparently at least 39,000 websites designed to trick you into sharing your login details. And these figures have been disclosed by none other than Meta (previously Facebook). Facebook now called Meta is the parent company of WhatsApp and Instagram. Earlier this week, Meta filed a lawsuit in California to disrupt this large-scale phishing campaign. The company has filed the federal lawsuit to “uncover the identities” of a group of people have created these 39,000-plus websites.
As per the company, this phishing scheme involves the creation of these websites that impersonate the login pages of Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. It adds that scammers use relay service Ngrok to redirect people to their websites in a way that allows them to hide their actions. “This enabled them to conceal the true location of the phishing websites, and the identities of their online hosting providers and the defendants,” says the lawsuit
When did the phishing attacks start
Though exact time of the origin of these attacks is not known, the volume of these attacks is saod to have increased in March 2021. It is then that the company 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,” says the company.
Incidentally, this is not the first time that Meta has used the threat of legal action to stop a phishing campaign. In 2019 and 2020, the company filed lawsuits against two domain name registrars — OnlineNIC and Namecheap — that reportedly allowed cybersquatters to claim domains like instagrambusinesshelp.com and whatsappdownload.site.
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