Facebook filed a lawsuit yesterday against a Chinese company and two Chinese nationals for abusing its advertising platform . Specifically, the popular social networking service said that the Chinese company was using the platform to run malware .
The company is called ILikeAd Media International Company Ltd. and is based in Hong Kong. It was founded in 2016 by Chen Xiao Cong and Huang Tao, against whom Facebook filed a lawsuit.
Facebook said that ILikeAd exploited ads displayed on the platform to lure victims, trick them into downloading and installing malicious software.
After installing the software, attackers could gain access to victims' Facebook accounts and display new ads, which supposedly came from the victims.
Facebook said IlikeAd often used photos of celebrities to get victims to click on the ad, a known practice the platform calls “celeb bait.”
In addition, the Chinese company also used another technique called “cloaking.”
Cloaking is a technique that hides the actual URL of an ad. That is, it does not show where the user will be taken if they click on an ad. Cloakers serve a version of an ad's URL to Facebook's crawlers, but ultimately redirect users to another site, which usually contains malicious content and infects victims' devices.
“Cloaking is a highly sophisticated and well-organized practice, making it difficult to identify and hold accountable the individuals and organizations behind it. As a result, there have not been many legal actions of this kind,” Facebook’s legal team said.
Facebook said it compensated users whose accounts were used to run unauthorized ads by ILikeAd.
The social networking platform also helped victims secure their accounts.
This isn't the first time the platform has sued a company for illegal advertising practices. In August, it filed a lawsuit against two Android app developers (LionMobi and JediMobi) for exploiting Facebook ads and using fake clicks to boost their revenue.
