Facebook sues Indian techie for running deceptive ads, fake information on coronavirus

Facebook has filed a good lawsuit against an Indian man for owning a software organization that pushed deceptive advertisements and misinformation about coronavirus outbreak on social media systems by bypassing its marketing review process.

The suit, filed in federal court in California, alleges that Basant Gajjar's company LeadCloak provided ad-cloaking software made to sneak fake news and scams related to COVID-19, cryptocurrency, weight loss supplements and more past Facebook and Instagram's automated advertising review process.

Using the brand LeadCloak,Gajjar, said to be located in Thailand, violated Fb Terms and Policies by providing cloaking software and companies designed to circumvent automated advertisement review systems, and eventually run deceptive advertisings on Facebook and Instagram, Jessica Romero, Director of System Enforcement and Litigation for Facebook stated in a statement.

LeadCloak's application also targeted several other technology companies including Google, Oath, WordPress, Shopify, and others, Romero said.

Cloaking is a good malicious technique that impairs ad analysis devices by concealing the type of the website linked to an ad. When advertisements will be cloaked, a company's advertisement review program may see an online site showing an innocuous merchandise for instance a sweater, but a user will see a different web-site, promoting deceptive product or service which, in many cases, are not allowed.

In this instance, Leadcloak's software was used to conceal websites featuring scams linked to global health crisis COVID-19, cryptocurrency, pharmaceuticals, diet pills, and fake news pages. Many of these cloaked websites as well included images of stars, the social media giant said in the affirmation.

As well as the filing, Facebook has taken complex enforcement procedures against Leadcloak and accounts that the business has  determined have used their application, including disabling personal and ad accounts on Facebook and Instagram. This suit may also further our attempts to identify Leadcloak's consumers and take more enforcement activities against them, the declaration added.