Facebook sues developers for planting malware on Android apps

Facebook Inc. sued two overseas developers for allegedly planting malware on Android apps that robotically clicked on ads to inflate revenue.

Through a practice known as “click injection fraud,” one of the apps generated more than 40 million ad impressions and 1.7 million clicks through Facebook’s Audience Network over a three-month period at the end of last year, according to a complaint filed Tuesday in San Francisco federal court.

Facebook has came under intense scrutiny over the use of private data and the impact of harmful content on its more than 2 billion users, with governments around the world challenging its policies. The company, meanwhile, is fighting back against commercial exploitation of its social networks. It’s suing firms in China and New Zealand, accusing them of artificially inflating “likes” and “followers” on Instagram accounts.