{"id":17158,"date":"2018-10-26T17:48:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T17:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/722cef19-8aa2-4229-871a-c0705d7d512e"},"modified":"2018-10-26T17:48:00","modified_gmt":"2018-10-26T17:48:00","slug":"facebook-removes-more-iran-linked-accounts-this-time-targeting-the-us-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.threatshub.org\/blog\/facebook-removes-more-iran-linked-accounts-this-time-targeting-the-us-uk\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook removes more Iran-linked accounts, this time targeting the US & UK"},"content":{"rendered":"

Facebook Head of Cybersecurity Policy Nathaniel Gleicher said today the company removed 82 pages, groups, and accounts for coordinated inauthentic behavior. The accounts originated in Iran and targeted people in the US and UK.<\/p>\n

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More security news<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

This is the second time Facebook intervenes to take down an Iran-linked social media influence campaign after the company previously removed 652 pages, groups, and accounts<\/a> at the end of August.<\/p>\n

In a telephone conference with members of the press, Gleicher said these 82 Facebook and Instagram accounts and groups have been registered by Iranian individuals posing as US or UK citizens. The accounts posted about politically charged topics such as race relations, opposition to the President, and immigration.<\/p>\n

“Our threat intelligence team first detected this activity one week ago,” Gleicher said. “Given the elections, we took action as soon as we’d completed our initial investigation.”<\/p>\n

Facebook said it notified the US and UK governments, US law enforcement, Congress, and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (which posted a separate analysis of the removed accounts, here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

When Facebook removed the 652 pages and accounts in August, Google and Twitter also followed suite with their own bans, and Facebook said it notified other technology companies this time as well.<\/p>\n

Facebook also said it found some overlaps between the accounts removed today, and the ones removed in late August, but didn’t go into further details. It did, however, provide a breakdown of the detected activity, including screenshots of the content these accounts had been posting this past week:<\/p>\n