Meta Platforms Inc. (formerly Facebook) Monday filed a lawsuit in federal court against Social Data Trading Ltd, a Hong Kong-based social media analytics company, for allegedly scrapping account profiles of more than 91 million Instagram users and selling the scraped data as “demographics and insights about influencers and their audiences.”
The social media giant accused Social Data of operating an unlawful service since September 2020 designed to scrape account profiles from various social media websites, including Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. The defendant allegedly used automated accounts and a network of computers pretending to be mobile Android devices connected to the official apps.
According to the complaint, Social Data scraped publicly viewable Instagram profiles, including usernames, profile photos, follower counts, post counts, number of likes, number of comments and verified badge status as well as information about their followers, such as gender, language and location.
Meta took action by blocking internet traffic from its products, Instagram and Facebook, to Social Data’s website. It also notified the defendant of its violations and disabled their accounts. However, the complaint alleges that Social Data Trading Ltd continued their business under a new name by anonymously registering a replacement website “IQdata.social.”
Meta thus alleges that Social Data violated the California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act by knowingly accessing and using Meta’s computers, computer system and computer network. Meta also claims that Social Data acted to execute fraudulent schemes and to wrongfully collect data in violation of California Penal Code § 502(c)(1).
The big tech giant also alleges that unauthorised scrapping of Instagram data constitutes a breach of contract imposed by Instagram’s Terms of Use, and the profits earned through such scrapping constitute unjust enrichment of the defendant at Meta’s expense.
Meta has recently announced a bug bounty program rewarding individuals reporting bugs and databases involved in the secret scrapping of Facebook and Instagram data.
