Meta Sues Scraping Service

<p>Meta is looking to thwart scrapers that collect data from users of Facebook and Instagram&period; <&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>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&comma; Instagram and other websites&period; Meta says it has disabled Voyager’s accounts&comma; filed this action to enforce its Terms and Policies and asked the Court to ban Voyager from Facebook and Instagram&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Meta says Voyager developed and used proprietary software to launch scraping campaigns against Facebook and Instagram&comma; and websites such as Twitter&comma; YouTube&comma; LinkedIn and Telegram&period; Voyager designed its scraping software to use fake accounts to scrape data accessible to a user when logged into Facebook&comma; including users profile information&comma; posts&comma; friends lists&comma; photos and comments&period; Voyager used a diverse system of computers and networks in different countries to hide its activity&comma; including when Meta subjected the fake accounts to verifications or checks&period; Voyager did not compromise Facebook&comma; instead it used fake accounts to scrape publicly viewable information&period; <&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>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&comma; including as a way to profile people for criminal behavior&period; This industry covertly collects information that people share with their community&comma; family and friends&comma; without oversight or accountability&comma; and in a way that may implicate people’s civil rights&period; <&sol;p>&NewLine;