After that over 300 thousand Instagram accounts have been cloned, Meta is taking legal action against two prolific data scrapers. In the company’s sights it’s over Octopus, the US branch of a Chinese tech multinational that offers rental data collection services to individuals and companies. And the private Ekrem Ates, which seems to have a role to play in the story. But let’s go and see in detail what happened.
Cloned Instagram Accounts: Meta Against Data Scrapers
Once again Meta moves to protect the privacy of its users. And she does it by filing a lawsuit against Octopus. The company, in fact, puts Instagram and Facebook accounts at risk by collecting all the data they contain, including authentication data. This means that the company’s software can get phone numbers, date of birth and others personal informations on every Facebook and Instagram friend connected to a particular Octopus customer. Therefore, Meta claims that the company has violated its terms of service and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by offering an automated scraping service. And also trying to avoid detection by the company itself.
“Companies like Octopus are part of an emerging scraping sector that provides automation services to any customer, regardless of who they turn to and for what purpose they do it – states Meta -. This industry makes scraping available to individuals and businesses that otherwise would not have the capabilities. ” As for Ekrem AtesInstead, Meta claims it has been using automated Instagram accounts to collect information on over 350 thousand users and then publish them on clone sites where it is possible to view them without the consent of the users themselves. Since the beginning of 2021, Meta claims to have taken multiple executive actions against Ateş, without achieving any actual results. Therefore, the lawsuit was almost a forced choice.