According to Shabnam Shaik, a Facebook security manager, the company has disrupted an international fake account operation that with fake "likes" would then flood their victims with spam.

"Our systems were able to identify a large portion of this illegitimate activity -- and to remove a substantial number of inauthentic likes," Shaik said in a blog post.

"By disrupting the campaign now, we expect that we will prevent this network of spammers from reaching its end goal of sending inauthentic material to large numbers of people."

The group tried to mask their origin by using proxy servers. Their goal was to trick people into connecting as friends so that they could later be targeted with spam.

Facebook is also targeting fake news. The company, under pressure to stymie the spread of fake news, is making it easier to report such posts and harder to earn money from them.

Source: Security Week