Meta settles lawsuits against firms that harvest its data

Meta (formerly Facebook) has settled a “significant sum” lawsuit against two companies that engaged in data-harvesting operations on its platforms.

Israel-based BrandTotal and US-incorporated Unimania have agreed to a permanent injunction barring them from collecting Facebook and Instagram data in the future or profiting from the data they collect.

“BrandTotal and Uninamia have also agreed to pay a significant financial sum as part of the settlement,” Meta said.

Meta, however, did not disclose the amount paid to the two firms.

The social network initially filed lawsuits in October 2020 in the US against two companies that used scraping to participate in an international data-harvesting operation.

These companies collected data from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Amazon to sell “marketing information” and other services.

“The actions of BrandTotal and Unimania violate our Terms of Service and we are taking legal action to protect our users,” Meta said.

Scraping is a form of data collection that relies on unauthorized automation to extract data from a website or app.

Meta then filed a new complaint in California federal court against BrandTotal and Unimania after the defendants published a new malicious extension to the Google Chrome Web Store designed to scrape Facebook, in violation of Facebook’s Terms of Service and policies, as well as state and federal law.

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