Facebook’s parent company Meta banned a series of “online mercenary” organizations on Thursday and began to alert about 50,000 people who may be the target of companies accused of spying on global activists, dissidents, and journalists.

Meta deleted 1,500 Facebook and Instagram pages associated with the group. The services of these pages allegedly ranged from obtaining public information online to using false characters to establish trust with targets or conducting digital snooping through hacking attacks.

The social media giant also began to warn about 50,000 people that it believes it may have become a target in more than 100 countries, including several companies from Israel, which is a leading company in the network surveillance business. “Meta’s head of security policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, said at a press conference.

Facebook’s parent company stated that it deleted accounts associated with Cobwebs Technologies, Cognyte, Black Cube and Bluehawk CI-all of which were established in or in Israel.

India-based BellTroX, North Macedonian company Cytrox and an unidentified entity in China have also seen accounts associated with them removed from the Meta platform. “These cyber mercenaries often claim that their services are only aimed at criminals and terrorists,” the Meta statement said.

It added: “The targets are actually indiscriminate, including journalists, dissidents, critics of dictatorships, families of opposition members, and human rights activists.” “We have banned them from using our services.”

In a statement to Agence France-Presse, Black Cube denied wrongdoing and even denied conducting business in the “online world.”

“Black Cube works with the world’s leading law firms to prove bribery, expose corruption and recover hundreds of millions of stolen assets,” it said, adding that the company ensures compliance with local laws.

Companies that sell “network intelligence services” start the surveillance process by collecting information from publicly available online sources such as news reports and Wikipedia.

Meta investigators said that online mercenaries then set up fake accounts on social media sites to collect information from people’s personal data and even join groups or conversations to learn more.

Another strategy is to win the trust of the target on social networks, then trick the person to click on a link or file with a booby trap, install software, and then steal information from any device they use to surf the Internet. Through this kind of access, according to the Meta team, mercenaries can steal data from the target’s cell phone or computer, and silently activate microphones, cameras, and tracking.

Meta reports that one of the target companies, Bluehawk, sells a wide range of surveillance activities, including managing fake accounts to install malicious code.

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