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BREAKING NEWS: FB going full LEGAL on Cloakers AND Their Customers (23)

04-09-2020 08:52 PM #1 cmdeal (Veteran Member)
BREAKING NEWS: FB going full LEGAL on Cloakers AND Their Customers

Facebook Sues Leadcloak and Goes After Their Customers

Excerpted from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ertising-links

"Facebook Inc. sued the founder of a software company for running deceptive advertisements on its social-media platforms, including links to investment scams and bogus information about the coronavirus pandemic.

Basant Gajjar’s “LeadCloak” software, designed to circumvent automated review systems in Facebook and Instagram, baits users into clicking on links that are unrelated to the ad, according to the lawsuit filed Thursday in California. Facebook said the software pushed deceptive ads for diet pills and drugs and cryptocurrency investment scams.

Gajjar, who was named as a defendant in the Facebook suit, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

LeadCloak has also targeted other technology companies including Google, Oath, WordPress and Shopify, according to the lawsuit."


Facebook's Statement


Today, Facebook filed a lawsuit in federal court in California against Basant Gajjar. Using the name “LeadCloak,” Gajjar violated Facebook Terms and Policies by providing cloaking software and services designed to circumvent automated ad review systems, and ultimately run deceptive ads on Facebook and Instagram. LeadCloak’s software also targeted a number of other technology companies including Google, Oath, WordPress, Shopify, and others.

Cloaking is a malicious technique that impairs ad review systems by concealing the nature of the website linked to an ad. When ads are cloaked, a company’s ad review system may see a website showing an innocuous product such as a sweater, but a user will see a different website, promoting deceptive products and services which, in many cases, are not allowed. In this case, Leadcloak’s software was used to conceal websites featuring scams related to COVID-19, cryptocurrency, pharmaceuticals, diet pills, and fake news pages. Some of these cloaked websites also included images of celebrities.

In addition to today’s filing, we have taken technical enforcement measures against Leadcloak and accounts that we’ve determined have used their software, including disabling personal and ad accounts on Facebook and Instagram. This suit will also further our efforts to identify Leadcloak’s customers and take additional enforcement actions against them.

This action is one of a number of efforts we are taking to protect our users and hold people who abuse our systems accountable in Court.

04-09-2020 09:05 PM #2 stickupkid (Senior Moderator)

Ouch... this one is gonna hurt. Not even talking about the long term effects of businesses like nutra, casino, cypto relying on cloakers. Ofcourse smart guys will always be quicker but oh boy how many are tough enough to face serious consequences like these to earn some (serious) bucks.

04-09-2020 09:08 PM #3 twinaxe (Senior Moderator)

Reminds me a bit on the case against Saucekit and customers quite a few years ago.

Maybe a simple solution for other cloakers: disable FB from the arsenal?

Facebook is really a spoilsport

04-09-2020 09:20 PM #4 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

Ouch, this is gonna hurt. @leadcloak guys (or guy) have an account here on STM, but I doubt we're gonna get any commentary from them.

I'm wondering how vulnerable they are in this case, after all they're just providing a service and it's up to the customers to decide what to do with it. Not taking any sides here, but similar arguments have been using by file sharing services for years... it's just a service, it's the users who upload pirated content

04-10-2020 09:36 AM #5 dontfarm (Banned)

Most likely it's a major player and it collected the most attention from facebook. Other services will either close themselves or continue to work quietly.

04-10-2020 09:45 AM #6 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

I just saw a post somewhere, the owner likely lives in India, so he might be out of reach for the US officials. Really looking forward to the outcome of this, if he get's hit, the whole cloaking scene might take a big blow.

04-10-2020 10:00 AM #7 dontfarm (Banned)

Quote Originally Posted by matuloo View Post
I just saw a post somewhere, the owner likely lives in India, so he might be out of reach for the US officials. Really looking forward to the outcome of this, if he get's hit, the whole cloaking scene might take a big blow.
To my knowledge, US laws only work in the US

04-10-2020 10:03 AM #8 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

Quote Originally Posted by dontfarm View Post
To my knowledge, US laws only work in the US
There are international treaties too... not sure if this case is covered by some or not though. We shall see

On top of this, FB is apparently also going after the users of the tool and I'm pretty sure many of them are located in the US.

04-10-2020 10:09 AM #9 dontfarm (Banned)

Quote Originally Posted by matuloo View Post
There are international treaties too... not sure if this case is covered by some or not though. We shall see

On top of this, FB is apparently also going after the users of the tool and I'm pretty sure many of them are located in the US.
The more facebook tries to clamp us in the corner, the stronger we get

04-10-2020 10:40 AM #10 platinum (Veteran Member)

Was just reading FB newsroom article a few minutes ago...

https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/ad...-ad-practices/

Curious to see how this will evolve in the long term.

04-10-2020 10:43 AM #11 Finch (Moderator)

Is anybody really surprised?

I can't fathom how anybody operating a cloaking business at scale on FB these days - particularly in a code red vertical - can have any confidence in the future of the model.

Sure, it makes money.

Most ticking time bombs tend to be rather cosy to sit on... until one day your balls are detached in different zipcodes.

04-14-2020 03:14 PM #12 yellow web (Member)

Haha, they say, that they'll also come for LeadCloak's users. But how on Earth will they get them, huh?)

04-14-2020 03:22 PM #13 ianternet (Senior Member)

this is interesting to see, wonder how this will affect trackers as well as they are somewhat cloakers in a sense that they redirect base on a set of rules as well instead of going off a dedicated database. the business of claoking isnt scalable like Finch stated, interesting to see where this goes and what the cloaking industry will do

04-14-2020 04:40 PM #14 sertys (Member)

They will enforce TECHNICAL measure against them, meaning will ban any accounts known to use the cloacker's signatures(including js/css/text patterns matched). They will not prosecute them per se in legal means.

04-14-2020 07:01 PM #15 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

Quote Originally Posted by sertys View Post
They will enforce TECHNICAL measure against them, meaning will ban any accounts known to use the cloacker's signatures(including js/css/text patterns matched). They will not prosecute them per se in legal means.
Are you sure about this? They have already been banning such accounts for years pretty much, that wouldn't be anything new. I got the impression that they plan to enter into legal action against the users of the product too.

04-14-2020 07:45 PM #16 twinaxe (Senior Moderator)

Quote Originally Posted by sertys View Post
They will enforce TECHNICAL measure against them, meaning will ban any accounts known to use the cloacker's signatures(including js/css/text patterns matched). They will not prosecute them per se in legal means.
What for js/css/text signatures on a PHP cloaker?

And well, cloakers that use js...

04-14-2020 07:45 PM #17 manu_adefy (Veteran Member)

Quote Originally Posted by matuloo View Post
Are you sure about this? They have already been banning such accounts for years pretty much, that wouldn't be anything new. I got the impression that they plan to enter into legal action against the users of the product too.
That's also true according to this tweet from Rob Leathern, the Product Director at FB: https://twitter.com/robleathern/stat...73526538670080

04-14-2020 08:59 PM #18 Fiddyshades (Member)

this will hurt the ad business

04-14-2020 09:45 PM #19 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

Quote Originally Posted by manu_adefy View Post
That's also true according to this tweet from Rob Leathern, the Product Director at FB: https://twitter.com/robleathern/stat...73526538670080
I guess we will have to wait and see how far theyre willing to take it :

This suit will also further our efforts to identify their customers and take additional enforcement actions against them (6/8)

04-15-2020 02:52 AM #20 gobroke (Member)

Gajjar is an Indian Citizen but he lives in Thailand currently. Both India and Thailand governments have an extradition agreement with the US government. So there is always a possibility that he can be extradited if the monetary damage is extremely high.

04-15-2020 07:07 PM #21 lupul_rau (Member)

Guys, if we put a page with a button before the actual funnel (that might be disapproved by facebook because it contains nutra or porn etc.) will facebook's bots go to the second page of the funnel as well? Or simply investigate the first page.. see that it's a simple innocent page and stop there (with Find out bla bla Continue Here -> )

04-16-2020 11:43 AM #22 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

Quote Originally Posted by lupul_rau View Post
Guys, if we put a page with a button before the actual funnel (that might be disapproved by facebook because it contains nutra or porn etc.) will facebook's bots go to the second page of the funnel as well? Or simply investigate the first page.. see that it's a simple innocent page and stop there (with Find out bla bla Continue Here -> )
If you send the clicks to a porn page, FB users will report this anyways so it wont help you much and the account will go down quickly. A manual reviewer will definitely click the button too and see what you are up to.

As for the bots, I'm pretty sure their bots are advanced enough to detect this simple and very old trick too.

04-16-2020 12:01 PM #23 lupul_rau (Member)

How about if we send the people from the facebook ad to a manychat messenger fanpage list where we give them the link to the nutra/porn offer?

Is there any other better ways that you know of to run nutra on facebook ads?

Thanks!

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