Facebook Sues Two Companies Engaged in Data Scraping Operations
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:
Facebook today says it has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. against two companies that had engaged in an international "data scraping" operation. The operation extended across Facebook properties, including both Facebook and Instagram, as well as other large websites and services, including Twitter, Amazon, LinkedIn and YouTube. The companies, who gathered the data of Facebook users for "marketing intelligence" purposes, did so in violation of Facebook's Terms of Service, says Facebook.
The businesses named in the lawsuits are Israeli-based BrandTotal Ltd. and Unimania Inc., a business incorporated in Delaware.
[...] Facebook's latest legal case is slightly different because the company is accusing BrandTotal of scraping Facebook profile data that wasn't inherently public. Facebook says the accused data scraper used a browser extension installed on users' computers to gain access to their Facebook profile data.
[...] Facebook isn't just cracking down on data scraping businesses to protect user privacy, however. It's because failing to do so can lead to large fines. Facebook at the beginning of this year was ordered to pay out over half a billion dollars to settle a class action lawsuit that alleged systemic violation of an Illinois privacy law. Last year, it settled with the FTC over privacy lapses and had to pay a $5 billion penalty. As governments work to further regulation online privacy and data violations, fines like this could add up.
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