Meta has sued Octopus, a US subsidiary of a Chinese high-tech enterprise, and a Turkish individual, for scraping data from Facebook, Instagram and other big tech platforms. Octopus claims to have over one million customers and offers scraping services and access to software that customers can use to scrape any website,
For a fee, Octopus customers can launch scraping attacks from its cloud-based platform, or hire Octopus to scrape websites directly.
“Octopus offers to scrape data from Amazon, eBay, Twitter, Yelp, Google, Target, Walmart, Indeed, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram,” Meta said in a statement late on Tuesday.
Octopus designed the software to scrape data accessible to the user when logged into their accounts.
It included data about their Facebook Friends, such as email addresses, phone numbers, gender and date of birth, as well as Instagram followers and engagement information, such as names, user profile URLs, locations, and numbers of likes and comments per post. We are seeking a permanent injunction against Octopus,” said Meta.
The social network also filed an action against a Turkish-based individual Ekrem Ates, for using automated Instagram accounts to scrape data from the profiles of more than 3 500 000 Instagram users.
By mid-year, through our disruption efforts, the known clone site ecosystem was reduced by about 90%,” revealed Meta.
A clone site is a third-party site that duplicates, in whole or in part, the content of an existing site. Among other things, clone sites can be used to display people’s scraped data, scam people, and damage the credibility of the original site.
Source: eNCA
In other news – Ramaphosa warns against selling alcohol to children following Enyobeni Tavern tragedy
President Cyril Ramaphosa says children should not be allowed at taverns and sold alcohol.
Twenty-one teenagers died at Enyobeni tavern in East London. Learn more
