With an aim to prevent fraud and stop the malicious use of Facebook company and product names, the Mark Zuckerberg-led company has now filed a lawsuit in Virginia against 12 domain names registered by India-based proxy service Compsys Domain Solutions Private Ltd. According to the social networking giant, these domain names were designed to deceive people by impersonating as Facebook’s family of apps, like: facebook-verify-inc.com, instagramhjack.com and videocall-whatsapp.com.
“We regularly scan the internet for domain names and apps that infringe on our trademarks and today’s lawsuit is part of this ongoing effort to protect people from phishing, credential theft and other methods of online fraud. We filed suit after we reached out to Compsys about these domain names and did not receive any response,” Christen Dubois, Director and Associate General Counsel, IP Litigation at Facebook, said in a blog post.
According to Facebook, Registrars and proxy services have a responsibility to take down deceptive and malicious websites. Asserting that the social-networking giant will continue to take legal action to protect the people who use its services, Dubois added, “We filed similar lawsuits against Namecheap and its proxy service this past March, and OnlineNIC and its proxy service in October 2019.”
Meanwhile, Facebook has also executed its plan to label media outlets that are wholly or partially under the editorial control of their respective government. The aim is to bring more transparency to its users for understanding who’s behind the news they see on Facebook.
“We’re providing greater transparency into these publishers because they combine the influence of a media organization with the strategic backing of a state, and we believe people should know if the news they read is coming from a publication that may be under the influence of a government,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Head of Cybersecurity Policy at Facebook, said in an official blog post.
Moreover, Facebook will also start labelling ads from state-controlled media outlets later this year to ensure the users that it’s equally transparent when it comes to paid content. According to social-networking giant, “State-controlled media outlets rarely advertise in the US. Nevertheless, later this summer we will begin blocking ads from these outlets in the US out of an abundance of caution to provide an extra layer of protection against various types of foreign influence in the public debate ahead of the November 2020 election in the US.”
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