Meta “Sues Untraceable" Surveillance Firm for Scraping Facebook and Instagram Data

There’s the right and ethical/legal way to do surveillance—and then there’s this.?

Only days after Meta achieved victory after suing the NSO Group for Computer Fraud and Abuse Act charges, the company filed a lawsuit against surveillance company Voyager Labs for violations of its Terms and Policies and California law. Voyager Labs, a surveillance firm, allegedly created thousands of Facebook and Instagram accounts so it could use its scraping tool to steal data.

According to court documents, Voyager Labs created 38,000 fake accounts on Facebook and Instagram so it could use its home-brew surveillance software to scrape data from them.

Voyager is said to have scraped more than half a million pieces of viewable profile information, including likes, comments, friends list, photos, and Facebook Groups and Pages information.

Meta was aware of Voyager's scraping activities long before formally filing a case against the company. Court documents show that no later than July 2022, Voyager began using its thousands of fake accounts to scrape data.

At least since February 2016, Voyager has been creating these multiple fake accounts on Meta's platforms, agreeing with its terms yet knowingly breaking them. On October 2017, Meta sent a cease and desist letter to Voyager for the alleged fake accounts.

When confronted about a Facebook account for an individual named "Olga Herrera", Meta alleges Voyager denied accessing, using, and controlling this account, although Meta says it had seen that a Voyager employee logged on to it just three days before.

Meta asserts in the complaint that Voyager also offered to scrape data from websites on client request.

Voyager's known target of data scraping range from “employees of non-profit organizations, universities, news media organizations, healthcare facilities, the armed forces of the United States, and local, state, and federal government agencies, as well as full-time parents, retirees, and union members". In the suit, Meta is also asking the court to enforce its Terms and Policies, and ban Voyager Labs from Facebook and Instagram.

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