Meta has alerted around 50, 000 users that their accounts were spied on by commercial' surveillance-for-hire' schemes around the globe. The global surveillance-for-hire industry targets people across the Internet to collect intelligence, manipulate them into revealing information and compromise their devices and accounts." We alerted around 50, 000 people who we believe were targeted by these malicious activities worldwide, using the system we launched in 2015," the company said in a statement."

That company was recently blacklisted by Washington.... The other was from a company called Cytrox, which also has Israeli ties.... Both instances of malware were simultaneously active on the phone, investigators said after examining its logs....