Facebook faces a major challenge to prevent interference in US elections

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Experts say the attacks on the US presidential election in 2016 have combined old espionage techniques with 21st century technologies that will not be easy to stop despite their detection.

Social networking companies, especially Facebook and Twitter, are under intense pressure to find ways to prevent what is often called "information warfare" on the sites of the two companies.

US special investigator Robert Mueller on Friday issued a list charging 13 Russian citizens who used Facebook and Instagram records on a large scale.

But the range of methods disclosed in the indictment, including the use of bogus companies, stolen identities and the use of virtual private networks to avoid online monitoring, suggests that even a Facebook-sized company may have difficulty blocking such activities when it occurs.

US intelligence agencies have said Russia will try to intervene in the mid-term elections again this year using social media to spread propaganda.

"They can not stop it altogether because it's very difficult to track those things," said Anne Ravell, a former member of the US Federal Election Commission, "It's very worrying to buy ads on the site with fake characters."

She added that Internet companies may need to use practices followed by banks to identify the identities of their customers and exchange information periodically with the authorities.