Welcome to the Tech Meme right home for Wednesday, August 22nd, 2018. I'm Brian McCullough.

Today, the fake Russians are back and this time they've brought some fake Iranians with them

Verizon throttles firefighters Google wants to tell you something good and day two of the Y

Combinator demos.

Here's what you missed today in the world of tech.

Well, I guess this is our new reality, if we're going to have to be doing stories like this every day now.

Facebook announced it has removed 652 pages, groups, and accounts on both Facebook and Instagram that were linked to Russia and Iranian

hackers who are quote coordinating inauthentic behavior. This time the fake accounts seemed to want to

influence US foreign policy and sentiment around politics especially in the

Middle East. Shortly after this, Twitter announced that it too had suspended

284 accounts for engaging in coordinated manipulation and

that many of the accounts appeared to originate again in Iran. So Facebook first, they were tipped off by

Fire Eye, a cyber security firm, and the Today we removed multiple pages groups and accounts for coordinated inauthentic

behavior on Facebook and Instagram. Some of this activity originated in Iran and

some originated in Russia. These were distinct campaigns and we have not identified any link or

coordination between them. However, they used similar tactics by creating networks

of accounts to mislead others about who they were and what they were doing."

As I've said before, security is not something that you ever fully solve, Facebook

Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on a call with reporters.

Quote, our adversaries are sophisticated and well funded but the shift we have made from

reactive to proactive detection is a big change and is going to make Facebook safer over time."

End quote.

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