Facebook sues Indian-American techie over fake news, deceptive ads on COVID-19
Facebook has filed a lawsuit against an Indian-American software architec who violated the company's policies in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.
The techie, Basant Gajjar, provided ad-cloaking software designed to push fake newsrelated to COVID-19, cryptocurrency, pharmaceuticals, diet pills and fake news pages on Facebook and Instagram.
Gajjar operated under the name 'LeadCloak'. Some of cloaked websites also included images of celebrities. His brief profile available on Internet says he is a digital marketer, SaaS expert and Founder and System Architect at LeadCloak.com.
LeadCloak's software also targeted a number of other technology companies including Google, Oath, WordPress, Shopify, and others, claimed Facebook in its lawsuit filed in federal court in California.
"Cloaking is a malicious technique that impairs ad review systems by concealing the nature of the website linked to an ad," Facebook said in a statement late Thursday.
"When ads are cloaked, a company's ad review system may see a website showing an innocuous product such as a sweater, but a user will see a different website, promoting deceptive products and services which, in many cases, are not allowed," explained Jessica Romero, Director of Platform Enforcement and Litigation at Facebook.
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Facebook added it has taken technical enforcement measures against Leadcloak and similar accounts.
"This suit will also further our efforts to identify Leadcloak`s customers and take additional enforcement actions against them," Facebook added.