Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Executive Officer of Meta Platforms Inc., left, arrives in federal court in San Jose, California, Tuesday, December 20, 2022.
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Meta filed a complaint against Voyager Labs on Thursday, alleging that the startup created fake Facebook accounts to collect information from real Facebook users, which it then used for its own business purposes.
Voyager Labs specializes in investigative software and services designed to help law enforcement agencies and businesses, among others, obtain information about suspects. Meta claimed that Voyager Labs’ software was based on data it had improperly collected from Facebook and Instagram, as well as other sites such as Twitter, YouTube, Twitter and Telegram.
According to the filing in the District Court for the Northern District of California, Meta alleged that Voyager Labs created over 38,000 fake Facebook user accounts. These helped the startup collect publicly posted information from more than 600,000 other Facebook users, including posts, likes, photos and friends lists. “Scraping” generally refers to the automated process of using software to scan a web page and compile information about it.
Meta attorneys wrote in the lawsuit that the company sent a letter to Voyager Labs on Nov. 11 requesting that the startup stop violating the company’s terms of service. Meta eventually suspended more than 60,000 Voyager Labs-related Facebook and Instagram accounts and pages, including at least 38,000 fake accounts, attorneys said.
“The defendant’s conduct was not approved by Meta and violates Facebook and Instagram’s terms and California law,” the complaint reads. “Accordingly, Meta is seeking damages and injunctive relief to stop the defendant from using its platforms and services.”
The company also asked the court to compel Voyager Labs to relinquish its “ill-gotten gains in an amount to be proved in court.”
CNBC reached out to Voyager Labs for comment.
Meta’s complaint follows a similar court case involving LinkedIn and corporate startup hiQ, which the Microsoft-owned social network claimed was scraping user data to power its human resources software.
After years of litigation, LinkedIn and hiQ finally settled against hiQ in a $500,000 judgment in December 2022, following a mixed judgment in a California district court in November. Similar to Meta, LinkedIn claimed that hiQ violated the company’s terms of service regarding data scraping.
This case caught the attention of privacy advocates and researchers, who feared the finding could potentially affect the work of journalists and surveillance groups who use automation software to monitor public websites and hold companies accountable.
Meta’s claims against Voyager Labs follow similar actions the social networking giant has taken against other companies it claims scrape user data.
For example, in September 2022, Meta reached an agreement with companies BrandTotal and Unimania, who agreed to “stop using and scraping Facebook and Instagram,” Meta said in another blog post.
Meta’s various legal actions to improve privacy privacy follow the company’s notorious Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, in which a political consultancy obtained user profile data through various methods (not scraping) abusively.