DIGITAL LIFE

Facebook removes fake accounts created in Iran

Facebook has removed 82 pages, groups and accounts created from Iran to influence the policy of the United States and the United Kingdom, reported the platform Friday.The administrators were registered in the social network as if they were US citizens and in some cases as British and published content on race relations, opposition to the president and immigration, said Nathaniel Gleicher, head of cybersecurity Facebook, in a post published in the Newsroom of the social network."Despite attempts to conceal their true identities, a manual review of these accounts linked their activity with Iran. We also identified some overlap with the Iranian accounts and pages we removed in August," the executive said, adding:However, it is still early and although we have not found links with the Iranian government, we can not say with certainty who is responsible.The threat intelligence team of the company was the first to detect the activity of these users a week ago. Since the platform prohibits "coordinated inauthentic behavior" on Facebook and Instagram, the new command center to combat disinformation in social network elections investigated the administrators of the same to eliminate them.The United States will hold its midterm elections next November 6, so the platform shared the findings of its initial investigation with the Government, the US Congress and police, as well as with the British Government, other technology companies and the Non-partisan Digital Forensic Research Laboratory of the Atlantic Council.This is what the social network has found so far:
30 pages, 33 accounts and 3 groups on Facebook, as well as 16 accounts on Instagram.About 1.02 million accounts followed at least one of these pages, approximately 25,000 accounts joined at least one of these groups and more than 28,000 accounts followed at least one of these accounts on Instagram.They spent less than US $ 100 and Canadian dollars for two ads on Facebook and Instagram. The first was published in June 2016 and the second in January 2018.Last August, Facebook, Twitter and Google reported that cyber-security firm FireEye discovered a disinformation campaign apparently coming from Iran, whose aim was to influence covertly in the public opinion of other countries, because it was in 11 different languages.On the other hand, the social network is still in the sights of justice and public opinion in Russiagate and Cambridge Analytica, for which received a fine of 500,000 pounds - about 565,550 euros - by the UK regulator, Information Commissioner's Office.


H. T.