Facebook is suing a Ukrainian programmer for allegedly scraping and selling publicly accessible information from millions of Facebook users.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in the Northern District of California federal court, accuses freelance programmer Alexander Alexandrovich Solonchenko of using automated means to scrape phone numbers and Facebook user IDs off roughly 178 million accounts in 2018 and 2019.
Solonchenko went on to allegedly sell the data on an online marketplace in May 2021. The majority of the stolen information belonged to users based in the United States, according to the lawsuit.
Facebook argues that Solonchenko violated Facebook’s terms of service, which prohibit users from doing anything unlawful, misleading or fraudulent.
The tech giant has disabled Solonchenko’s Facebook and Instagram accounts and revoked his access to the company’s websites. Its lawsuit asks for a jury trial.
Facebook changes the way it measures accounts for advertisers
©2021 USA Today
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Citation:
Facebook accuses Ukrainian programmer of selling 178 million users’ data, files lawsuit (2021, October 25)
retrieved 25 October 2021
from https://techxplore.com/news/2021-10-facebook-accuses-ukrainian-programmer-million.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
For all the latest Technology News Click Here
For the latest news and updates, follow us on Google News.
