Meta sues two unscrupulous data brokers

Meta is suing two unscrupulous data brokers. The company and the individual have abused the services of the giant.

Meta has decided to sue two prolific but unscrupulous data brokers. A few days ago, the American giant filed two lawsuits in federal court against Octopus and a man named Ekrem Ates. The former is the US subsidiary of a Chinese multinational technology company that offers job search services to individuals and businesses, according to firm Menlo Park.

Meta sues two unscrupulous data brokers

Octopus also sells software that people can use to run their own data collection campaigns. According to Meta, this program first hacks the user’s Facebook and Instagram accounts and provides authentication data to Octopus, and then restores all data accessible through that user account. The software can then retrieve the phone numbers, dates of birth, and other personal information of all Facebook and Instagram relatives associated with that Octopus user. Meta alleges that Octopus violated its terms of service as well as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by offering an automatic scraping service and attempting to avoid detection by the company.

“Companies like Octopus are part of a nascent scraping industry that offers automated services to everyone — no matter who they target or why they do it,” Meta says. “This industry is making web scraping accessible to individuals and businesses that would not otherwise be able to do so.”

A company and an individual have abused the services of a giant

As for Ekrem Ates, who was sued by Meta, the company explains that he used Instagram’s automated accounts to collect information on more than 350,000 Instagram users and then posted that data on a number of clone sites where anyone who could view this information without their consent. Since the beginning of 2021, Meta explains that it has taken several legal actions against Ekrem Ates, including legal notice and withdrawal of access to services. This isn’t the first time Meta has used legal action to try and stop this wild scraping. For example, in 2020 the company sued a Turkish developer who recovered data from over 100,000 Instagram profiles.