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Meta has been accused of using fake accounts, proprietary software, and a sprawling network of IP addresses to surreptitiously collect large amounts of personal data from users of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social networks.・He said that he is suing Voyager Labs, a “hire” service. networking site.
“Defendants created and used over 38,000 fake Facebook user accounts and their monitoring software to create and use over 600,000 Facebook users’ viewable profile information (posts, likes, friend lists, photos, comments, and (including information from Facebook groups and pages),” the lawyer said. I wrote to Meta complaints. “Defendant designed surveillance software to hide its existence and activity from her Meta and others, and licensed it to sell the scraped data for a profit.”
“Make your personality stand out”
According to Meta, some California-based Facebook users whose data was scraped include “nonprofit organizations, universities, news media organizations, medical facilities, the U.S. military, and local, state, and federal agencies. This included employees, and full-time parents, retirees, and union members.” Meta said collecting data and using fake accounts violated its terms of service. .
Israel-based Voyager Labs collects data from “billions of ‘human pixels’ and signals” and uses artificial intelligence to map relationships, track geographic locations, and identify other individuals. We take pride in being a service that “provides data to institutions” and “research using AI”. entrusted with public safety. “
“By tapping into this vast sea of data, they can gain actionable insights on individuals, groups, and topics, allowing them to dig deeper and reveal more.” A company official wrote in the marketing material attached to Meta’s complaint: “Reveal your personality” is the tagline on Voyager Labs’ letterhead.
In one case, the service used Facebook posts to identify the full names of an Italian marathon runner and his wife who contracted COVID-19. The service then provided a list of friends and individuals who interacted with the runner. In another case, Voyager Labs identified a British pub patron who may have contracted the deadly virus.
According to the exhibit, Voyager Labs’ customers include the Los Angeles Police Department. According to testimony provided by one division member, Voyager Labs “was able to identify some new targets in a much more readable format” and “was much more readable and was able to process the return of warrants much more quickly.” That’s it.
Some images from the exhibition can be found in the gallery below.
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Meta v. Voyager Labs Claims
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Meta seeks a permanent injunction barring Voyager Labs from continuing to operate.
In announcing the lawsuit, Platform Enforcement and Litigation Meta Director Jessica Romero wrote:
Voyager developed and used its own software to launch scraping campaigns against websites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Telegram. Voyager designed scraping software to scrape user profile information, posts, friend lists, photos, comments, and other data that users have access to when logged into Facebook using a fake account. Voyager used diverse systems of computers and networks in different countries to conceal its activities, including when Meta verified or checked fake accounts. Voyager did not compromise Facebook, but used fake accounts to scrape publicly available information.
Our lawsuit alleges that Voyager violated their terms of service over fake accounts and unauthorized automated scraping. We are seeking a permanent injunction against Voyager to protect people from scraping for hire services. Companies like Voyager are part of an industry that offers scraping services to anyone, regardless of target audience or purpose such as profiling criminal activity. This industry surreptitiously collects information that people share with their communities, family and friends, without oversight or accountability, in ways that may implicate people’s civil rights.
Voyager Labs representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This lawsuit is at least the second time Meta has taken legal action for alleged data scraping on its platform. In July, the company sued Octopus, a U.S. subsidiary of a Chinese state-owned tech company, for allegedly offering to scrape any website, and accused Turkey-based individual Ekrem Atesh of using his Instagram account to It sued for scraping data from profiles. His 350,000+ users on that platform.
Meta doesn’t always have completely clean hands when it comes to unnecessary scraping. In 2018, several of his Facebook users who chose to share their contacts were heartbroken that the company had collected years of call metadata from his Android phone. Data included names, phone numbers, and the length of each call made or received. Facebook denied the data was secretly collected.
