Meta Sues Scraping Service

Meta is looking to thwart scrapers that collect data from users of Facebook and Instagram&period; &NewLine;The social media company recently filed a lawsuit against Voyager Labs in federal court in California&period; Voyager Labs is a scraping and surveillance service that improperly collected data from Facebook, Instagram and other websites&period; Meta says it has disabled Voyager’s accounts, filed this action to enforce its Terms and Policies and asked the Court to ban Voyager from Facebook and Instagram&period;&NewLine;Meta says Voyager developed and used proprietary software to launch scraping campaigns against Facebook and Instagram, and websites such as Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Telegram&period; Voyager designed its scraping software to use fake accounts to scrape data accessible to a user when logged into Facebook, including users profile information, posts, friends lists, photos and comments&period; Voyager used a diverse system of computers and networks in different countries to hide its activity, including when Meta subjected the fake accounts to verifications or checks&period; Voyager did not compromise Facebook, instead it used fake accounts to scrape publicly viewable information&period; &NewLine;The lawsuit by Meta alleges that Voyager has violated its Terms of Service against fake accounts and unauthorized and automated scraping&period; The company is seeking a permanent injunction against Voyager to protect people against scraping-for-hire services&period; Companies like Voyager are part of an industry that provides scraping services to anyone regardless of the users they target and for what purpose, including as a way to profile people for criminal behavior&period; This industry covertly collects information that people share with their community, family and friends, without oversight or accountability, and in a way that may implicate people’s civil rights&period; &NewLine;

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