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Facebook claims to have discovered a new fake attack apparently aimed at manipulating public opinion in the United States ahead of the major legislative elections in the fall.
a total of eight suspicious Facebook pages, 17 profiles and seven accounts of the Instagram photo platform (also belongs to Facebook) were removed.
The fake coordinated campaign also has the call for an alleged rally against next week in Washington is part of it, Facebook announced. 2600 interested users must now be informed that the event is a fake.
But who is behind the new attack?
Facebook's security chief, Alex Stamos, wrote in a blog entry that he could be "IRA with improved capabilities". separate group. "The Russian-based group" Internet Research Agency "(IRA) reportedly influenced the presidential elections in 2016.
Stamos continued to write that this time the tracks were more blurry, but links were found of any The details of the possible backers did not make Facebook.
The new fraud pages are still relatively fresh. According to Facebook, the new activities would have started significantly after the end of the US presidential campaign , in March 2017. The most recent Facebook page was created in May of this year, and more than 290,000 subscribed to these sites.The group ran approximately 150 Facebook ads between April 2017 and June 2018
Why Facebook triggered the alarm?
The discovery of fraudulent pages is all the more relevant as legislative elections are under way in the United States in November – and the authorities do not want to allow a repeat of the manipulation during the 2016 election campaign. The propaganda campaign, probably led by Russia, aimed to deepen the political divisions in American society and to directly create a mood for future winner Donald Trump.
Facebook has been heavily criticized for allowing false accounts on the platform to spread misinformation on a large scale. This is why the online network has significantly beefed up security measures last year.
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