Facebook Looks to Decloak LeadCloak via a Lawsuit

The social network claimed Basant Gajjar’s technology circumvented its automated ad review systems

Facebook filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Thursday against Basant Gajjar, alleging that he violated the social network’s terms and policies by providing cloaking software and services under the name LeadCloak that was designed to circumvent the company’s automated ad review systems and run deceptive ads on Facebook and Instagram.

LeadCloak’s software targeted other technology companies including Google, Oath, Shopify and WordPress, Facebook director of platform enforcement and litigation Jessica Romero said in a Newsroom post.

LeadCloak’s homepage makes little effort to conceal these activities, saying, “LeadCloak is a powerful cloaker that you can use to easily cloak various ad networks to get targeted traffic to your web sites and offer pages.”

Romero added that Facebook disabled personal and ad accounts on Facebook and Instagram that it determined used LeadCloak’s software, and it intends to continue efforts to identify LeadCloak’s customers and take additional enforcement actions against...

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