Meta is suing a company that used fake accounts to scrape user data

Meta is filing a lawsuit against the British company Voyager Labs. Facebook’s parent company claims that Voyager Labs used 38,000 fake accounts to collect personal data from 600,000 Facebook users.

The fake accounts would allow Voyager Labs to access the public profile information of users, which is accessible to any logged in user. The scraped data consisted of profile information, such as posts, likes, friends, photos and comments. meta says that Voyager Labs fake accounts have now been disabled and has asked the court to ban the company from Facebook and Instagram.

Voyager Labs would target companies with its scraping tools that want to monitor social media platforms without being noticed. Previously, the company’s software deployed by the Los Angeles Police Department. This allowed the LAPD to easily check the accounts of thousands of online friends of potential suspects.

Meta has also been in a legal dispute with Israeli spyware maker NSO Group for years. The tech giant claims that the company exploited a vulnerability in WhatsApp to infect 1,400 smartphones with spyware. One hundred journalists and human rights activists are said to be among the affected users.

Image: Solen Feyissa