Facebook as a company relies quite a bit on making itself seem like a trustworthy option to various companies that would be interested in working with the platform in order to turn a profit, but with all of that having been said and now out of the way it is important to note that a lot of hackers are making things very difficult for the social media juggernaut in this regard. A good example of this can be seen in the recent hack where preexisting ad accounts were hijacked for the purposes of running misleading ads.
The individuals who are responsible for this attack originate from Vietnam, and they managed to gain access to the accounts of multiple executives working at numerous ad agencies around the world. They managed to achieve this goal through session theft which was made possible by an Android app called Ad Manager for Facebook, and it seems like Facebook is not taking this lightly since the social media platform is now pursuing legal action so that they can go about suing these perpetrators in order to ensure that no one manages to do something like this ever again.
This hack resulted in marketing agencies losing $36 million due to ads that were illicitly placed through these malicious actors, and suffice it to say that this is a really big reputational risk for Facebook in general. The fact that such an Android app was up on the Play Store is not a good sign either, since although it is no longer listed on the store it still managed to allow people to do a great deal of harm. Other entities are being sued as well for allegedly misusing Facebook’s ad platform, so it appears that the social media company is trying to clean up shop in order to ensure a safer and more trustworthy ad space for all.
Read next: Facebook tests anti-extremist feature in the US; Users can now report extremism or be notified when in contact with extreme content
The individuals who are responsible for this attack originate from Vietnam, and they managed to gain access to the accounts of multiple executives working at numerous ad agencies around the world. They managed to achieve this goal through session theft which was made possible by an Android app called Ad Manager for Facebook, and it seems like Facebook is not taking this lightly since the social media platform is now pursuing legal action so that they can go about suing these perpetrators in order to ensure that no one manages to do something like this ever again.
This hack resulted in marketing agencies losing $36 million due to ads that were illicitly placed through these malicious actors, and suffice it to say that this is a really big reputational risk for Facebook in general. The fact that such an Android app was up on the Play Store is not a good sign either, since although it is no longer listed on the store it still managed to allow people to do a great deal of harm. Other entities are being sued as well for allegedly misusing Facebook’s ad platform, so it appears that the social media company is trying to clean up shop in order to ensure a safer and more trustworthy ad space for all.
Read next: Facebook tests anti-extremist feature in the US; Users can now report extremism or be notified when in contact with extreme content
