Author: Rogers Moore
The social media giant, Facebook, is under fire again because of the groups on the platform that offer even illegal hacking services, such as tools and software, that can steal Instagram passwords and credit card data.
What’s more alarming is that the Facebook groups are active and have thousands of monthly posts—hinting that there are still consistent problems with the security and moderation of the social media platform. At the same time, the said illegal Facebook groups offer changing school grades and access to illicit forums. This hints that the repeated efforts of Facebook regarding regulations are not effective.
No questions, Facebook is effortless to access, and there are no regulations on creating a group.
Obviously, the social media giant seemed to struggle with keeping the platform free from illegal stuff.
As a matter of fact, this is not the first time that Facebook has encountered such problems. In 2019, it made headlines that some Facebook groups were utilized as Black Market, publicly selling stolen credit card numbers.
More relevant details about the illegal Facebook groups
According to an analysis, about 45 active Facebook groups and pages are created to have illegal activities. What’s terrifying is that many people seemed to like the groups, as they have more than 1 million combined members.
That’s not good, especially since the groups are easy to search for with some keyword and group referrals. The most common illegal service is the hacking-for-hire in about 11 group pages.
Moreover, the groups about hacking services have about 100,000 members with thousands of posts between 12,000 and 18,000 per month.
They might be tempting because most of the hacking services promise to deliver confidential and victims’ financial information.
Certainly, this data proves that Facebook can hardly keep up with the ideal face in preventing illicit behavior and illegal activities.
As the news about some Facebook groups offering illegal services has already made headlines, it is obvious Facebook is already aware of the issue.
In fact, a spokesperson stated that they are taking significant steps to stop criminal activities on its social media platform.
Furthermore, Meta (Facebook’s parent company) also invests heavily in technology to tackle illegal content. After all, part of the platform’s commitment is to keep it safe for users.
Surely, it is part of Meta’s community standards to ban anyone with the intention to use the platform for illegal activities. Despite that standard, forbidden things are still happening as some rules seem loose. Also, Facebook appears to rely on users for reporting anything illicit—it is ineffective because no one wants to self-report or get themselves tangled in messy things that will not benefit them.
Takeaway
The world’s largest social media platform, Facebook is being countered for harboring hackers in some of its groups.
According to the claims, there are several groups with up to a million combined members trading people’s confidential information such as email login information, and financial details, among others. Even though social media company is trying their best, it seems things are going beyond control.