San Francisco, Dec 21 (IANS): Meta (formerly Facebook) has filed a federal lawsuit in California court in the US to disrupt phishing attacks designed to deceive people into sharing their login credentials on fake login pages for Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.

This phishing scheme involved the creation of more than 39,000 websites impersonating the login pages of Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.

On these websites, people were prompted to enter their usernames and passwords, which Defendants collected.

Phishing is a significant threat to millions of Internet users. These attacks lure victims to a website that appears to be operated by a trusted entity, such as a bank, a merchant, or other service.

The website, however, is a deception, a fake, and the site's fake content is designed to persuade a victim to enter sensitive information, like a password or email address.

"Reports of phishing attacks have been on the rise across the industry and we are taking this action to uncover the identities of the people behind the attack and stop their harmful conduct," Meta said in a statement late on Monday.

As part of the attacks, Defendants used a relay service to redirect internet traffic to the phishing websites in a way that obscured their attack infrastructure.

This enabled them to conceal the true location of the phishing websites, and the identities of their online hosting providers and the defendants.

"Starting in March 2021, when the volume of these attacks increased, we worked with the relay service to suspend thousands of URLs to the phishing websites," said Meta.