Meta sues a company for collecting information from more than 600,000 Facebook accounts using fake profiles

Goal has launched a lawsuit against Voyager Labs, a company that bills itself as an investigative tool for law enforcement, for collecting information from more than 600,000 Facebook accounts by using fake profiles. Mark Zuckerberg’s company assures that the British firm had the objective of selling this data to its clients.

“The tech giant has filed a lawsuit against UK-registered collection and surveillance company Voyager Labs, alleging that the company created unauthorized fake accounts and used them to collect data from Facebook and Instagram, as well as Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Telegram”, reports Gizmodo.

LOOK: Meta will no longer allow ads aimed at adolescents based on their gender

By using fake profiles, the British company accessed the data of thousands of users. “Meta claims Voyager created more than 38,000 fake accounts and used them to extract the ‘visible profile information’ of 600,000 Facebook users. That profile data potentially involves posts, likes, friend lists, photos and comments and certain data pulled from Facebook groups and pages.”, he adds.

The British company would have sold this information to whoever offered the most money. “Voyager allegedly marketed its scraping tools [recoger datos visibles de forma sistemática] to companies interested in conducting surveillance on social networking sites without being detected and then sold his reward to the highest bidder”, assures the medium.

LOOK: Meta Quest 1 virtual reality headsets will come to an end in 2024

Meta, for its part, asked the courts that the company can no longer access its applications. “Voyager’s targets, Meta’s complaint alleges, were broad and included employees of nonprofit organizations, media companies, universities and the US military, among others. In a blog post, Meta said it filed the complaint to enforce its own rules, which Voyager violated, and asked the court to block the company from Facebook and Instagram.“, Add.

“Companies like Voyager are part of an industry that provides data mining services to anyone, regardless of who they are targeting and for what purpose, including as a way to profile people for criminal behavior. This industry covertly collects information that people share with their community, family and friends, without oversight or accountability, and in a way that may affect people’s civil rights”Meta said in a statement.

Source: Elcomercio

Callum

I have worked in the news industry for over 10 years. I have a vast amount of experience in writing and reporting. I have also worked as an author for a number of years, writing about technology and other topics.

I am a highly skilled and experienced journalist, with a keen eye for detail. I am also an excellent communicator, with superb writing skills. I am passionate about technology and its impact on our world. I am also very interested in current affairs and the latest news stories.

I am a hardworking and dedicated professional, who always strives to produce the best possible work. I am also a team player, who is always willing to help out others.